


Only Way Out Is Through

by saltedpin



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DCEU
Genre: Bottom Clark, Clark Whump, Clark is the Codex, First Time, Fuck Or Die, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Tentacles, Just... a lot of Clark whump, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, very slightly implied Diana/Lois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:30:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: “It’s the ship,” Clark says, his voice coming out hard and gritty.

  He watches Bruce’s brow furrow, eyes narrowing.

  “The ship? The scout ship?”

  Clark nods. He takes a deep breath, trying to figure out how to word this. “It wants something.”
 Post-canon, in which Clark and Bruce have to deal with the things Luthor left behind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zgory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zgory/gifts).



> Firstly, thank you to my recipient for their wonderful prompt! I really hope you enjoy the story -- I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty much weeping blood a few hours before reveals trying to get the ending done, so I'm super sorry about how rushed it is D: I originally intended to write something in the ballpark of 10,000 words, which obviously... didn't happen, and my carefully planned timeline was useless! Despite that, I hope this is what you were hoping for, and I'm very happy to have been your writer for this exchange :DDD
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> A few of the minor mentions of who goes after and gets military contracts in the DCEU are taken from [this chart included in a viral marketing interview with Lex Luthor](https://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/12/lexical-analysis-lex-luthor-on-disrupting-the-vigilante-industrial-complex/). 
> 
> I really kind of just make up a lot of stuff about Kryptonian tech and how it works, and the scout ship in particular. I tried to not to make it contradict anything we see in canon _too_ flagrantly, and I apologise if I got something super obvious wrong!
> 
> Thank you so much to my heroic beta Apathy, who sat up late with me to try to help me through the last of it - any typos, errors, or other snags are entirely my own.

Maybe the League hasn’t yet come together in quite the way Bruce had hoped, but, he has to say, he does enjoy these dinners with Diana.

She’s been receptive to him, in her fairly circumspect way – she still won’t help him find the others in the footage they jointly pilfered from Luthor, and tells him that if they want to come, they will. But further than that, she will not go. Bruce can’t say he blames her.

They usually meet in places where the lights are low, the entrance is discreet, and the staff don’t tattle. But if they are seen together… well, she’s a buyer and seller of expensive antiquities; he has more money than any man could reasonably spend. There’s only about a hundred perfectly legitimate reasons why they might meet.

 _Or they’ll think we’re on a date,_ Bruce had said to her once with a smarmy smile, just to see how she’d react. A ghostly smile had flitted across Diana’s lips, before she’d said, _You’re not exactly my type._

They still meet, though – occasionally they’ll pass information to each other. Their work dovetails surprisingly well: where there’s ancient artefacts there’s money, where there’s money there’s smugglers, and where there’s smugglers, Bruce wants to know about it.

Tonight, though, this isn’t what’s on his mind.

“Have you noticed anything… different about Clark?”

Bruce tries to keep his tone as nonchalant as he can, even though he knows it’ll cut no ice with Diana. She looks up at him, expression flat. She doesn’t have to say anything – Bruce knows he shouldn’t have asked. It’s one of the rules between them: implicit rather than stated outright, but there all the same. Don’t ask about things the others don’t readily volunteer. Bruce knows that if he _really_ wanted to, he could, with a little digging, find out a great deal of whatever he wants to know. But so far, he’s resisted. He’s supposed to trust them. Whatever that means, in this context.

“And if I _have_ noticed anything?” Diana asks, voice cool, her expression unchanging.

Bruce shrugs a little – he can already tell he’s going to regret opening his big mouth about this. “It was just a question.”

“A question you wanted an answer to,” Diana says, leaning back in her chair slightly. “Or else I assume you wouldn’t have asked it.”

Bruce waits for her to continue – but Diana’s played this game before with him, and she can wait him out. He knows this. And he knows her well enough by now that he can see the implied question in her eyes: _Why are you asking me this?_

“You don’t know –” Bruce starts to say, before abruptly cutting himself off. He’d been on the verge of saying _You don’t know him like I do_ – and maybe that’s true. He’d spent countless hours studying footage of Superman, watching him fight, watching the way he moved and how he operated. Where he went and what he did. Trying to crawl into his mind the same way he’s crawled into the minds of all the criminals he’s taken down over the years.

Bruce realises, though, that he’s speaking to Diana, and she, at least, won’t have the slightest hesitation to raise her eyebrow and ask him, her voice as sharp and cool as cut glass, _Yes, and what exactly was it that you_ did _with all of that knowledge?_

“I don’t know what?” Diana’s tone is arch, and Bruce thinks she probably guessed what he was going to say anyway. She’s perceptive like that, and Bruce has never quite been able to shake off the impression that she’s had him pegged from the time of their very first meeting, as they stood together discussing the faked sword of Alexander the Great. Maybe she’d been right about little boys, after all.

Bruce clears his throat. “You don’t know for sure that there isn’t something wrong.”

Diana cocks her head a little – she doesn’t buy it, even for a moment, and why would she? Bruce can see the words clearly in her eyes. _I know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. I know what you think you have to make up for._

But then she sighs, looking away – just this once, giving Bruce a pass. She can be merciful after all. When it suits her.

“You’re not his keeper,” she says, voice soft. “He doesn’t need one.”

Bruce swallows. She’s right – she usually is. And there are boundaries. There need to be, for his own sake as much as for Clark’s. _Or for anyone else’s,_ Bruce hastily adds. This isn’t just about him and Clark and what happened between them.

“I know you’re going to do what you want to do, regardless of anything I say,” Diana tells him after a moment. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Bruce frowns, narrowing his eyes. Diana isn’t usually obtuse, but now, he feels like he has to scrabble after her meaning, chasing it down as it twists and turns away from him.

He still isn’t entirely sure he knows what she means when he growls out, “What kind of man do you think I am?”

Diana pins him beneath her black eyes. “I know exactly what kind of man you are,” she says.

 

*

 

The sky is bone-white and a slow drizzle is descending as Bruce stands, staring out at the lake, his cup of coffee going cold in his hand.

He’s already been to work – or at least, he’s teleconferenced in for long enough to uphold the general impression of Bruce Wayne as a sleaze with no sense for anything other than a quick buck – and though it’s still early, he can feel fatigue creeping down over his shoulders, weighing heavy in his chest.

He hadn’t slept much last night – Diana’s words had been playing over and over again in his mind. She was right: he knows he’s stepping into areas he has no right to trespass, especially not after what had happened between him and Clark. This – the accord between them, the League, or hell, Clark being alive _at all_ – is still new. They’re still feeling their way through this – through the layers of doubt and mistrust, and where exactly the lines in the sand are drawn. Bruce doesn’t even know Clark well enough yet to know if he’ll tell him when he’s crossing it.

And even if Bruce _had_ noticed something… weird about Clark recently, well, how the hell is a man _supposed_ to act after he’s been dead for six months?

Bruce takes a long drink of his barely lukewarm coffee, before going back to the kitchen and dumping the rest down the sink. He doesn’t feel like he wants anything in his stomach at the moment, anyway.

Turning away from the window, Bruce leans back against his kitchen counter and crosses his arms across his chest, staring at nothing.

Occasionally, on the rare nights when he gets to bed before sunrise, Bruce wakes up and has to wonder whether he’s been dreaming.

It wouldn’t exactly be the first time. He’s lost count of the number of dreams he’s had where he’s turned at the sound of the door opening and seen his parents, coming into the house as if nothing is wrong and looking just as they did when he was a child. In that moment, it seems logical – they’ve been away, and they should have contacted him but they didn’t, and this has been a huge misunderstanding. In his dream, he’s usually frighteningly angry, demanding to know, _Why didn’t you – how could you have let me think –_ and then he wakes, heart pounding with unspent anger, fists curled, jaw clenched. His own fury frightens him, and he wonders whether, if by some miracle he had a second chance, that’s how he’d behave.

It’s not something he spends a lot of time considering, because there are no second chances. Not in life, and certainly not in death. Or at least, that’s what he’d _thought._ That was in the days before Alfred had come down to see him in the Cave where Bruce had been buried in some task or other – Christ, he can’t even remember what now – and said, _Sir, perhaps you need to see this_ , because Alfred has always had a talent for ridiculous understatement.

And for the first time, Bruce has a chance to test his theory about how he’d behave.

Without even meaning to, Bruce has been filing these things away in his mind: every time Clark clenches his fist at the slightest noise; every time a feverish sweat breaks out over his forehead; every time he gets that look in his eye like he’s an animal being slowly hunted.

Clark has always been almost uncannily pale, especially for someone who apparently spends as much time in the sun as he does, but his skin has looked almost clammy lately, and there’s dark circles under his eyes, like he’s not getting enough sleep.

Which Bruce would readily accept under ordinary circumstances, if only he didn’t know that Clark doesn’t need to sleep.

Bruce pulls in a deep breath. He supposes he can dance around it as long as he likes. He might have been unwilling to explicitly tell Diana this, but there’s no point in being coy with himself: Clark looks the same way he looked in those first few seconds after the kryptonite hit him – when he was still weak and breathless. The way he looked when Bruce’s foot was pressing down in his throat, cutting off the air he didn’t ordinarily need, bleeding from the cut on his face that Bruce had put there.

Bruce swallows. Diana’s words come back to him: _You aren’t his keeper. He doesn’t need one._

He can finish her thought for her: _And if he did, it wouldn’t be you._

Maybe she’s right – well, no, she’s _definitely_ right. The idea that either Clark Kent or Superman would come to him for help is laughable. Even without their history. Clark had trusted him to save his mother, but he’d had no choice then – Lex had played them both for fools, and backed them into a corner so expertly that it still makes Bruce’s heart rage to think of it.

If he still trusts him now, then he hasn’t mentioned it to Bruce.

Bruce grimaces. His eyes go to his cell phone, where it sits on the black marble of his kitchen counter.

He doesn’t let himself think about it for too long. He picks up the phone and scrolls to where _Clark Kent – Daily Pl._ is listed in his contacts. (That’s not suspicious, they both had agreed. Bruce has a lot of reporters’ names in his contacts, whether they’re on his payroll or not.) The phone rings – for longer than Clark ever lets it – before it’s finally picked up.

“Daily Planet, Clark Kent’s desk.” The voice is young and female – and most certainly not Clark.

“It might be his desk, but you sound a lot cuter than Clark usually does,” Bruce says, putting every ounce of sleazy charm Bruce Wayne possesses into his voice. “What’s up with that?”

There’s a slight pause on the other end of the phone. “Oh. Well – ”

“I’m just kidding. It’s Bruce Wayne – Wayne Enterprises, you know? Is Mr Kent around?”

Another pause, then a slight laugh. “Oh – Mr Wayne – I, uh – well –” She laughs again, a little flustered. “I’m sorry. Clark’s not in today.”

“Oh, man,” Bruce affects exaggerated irritation. “And me here finally returning his call. Will he be back today? Is there a time I can get him? This is such a hassle.”

“He’s off sick,” the woman says, “but if you leave a message, I can make sure he gets it.”

“I don’t know, just tell him I called,” Bruce says. “And ask him where the goddamn fire is. Nothing could be so urgent that he has to get in contact with me this very second. But you know how Clark is, right?”

Another pause, then the woman giggles. “Yeah, I sure do.”

He says his thanks and hangs up – he keeps his tone light and flirty, but his eyes, reflected at him from the window, are hard as flint.

Clark doesn’t need to take a sick day. He’s pretty sure Superman doesn’t get sick. That’s kind of the point of him. So it’s either that something is _very_ wrong, or he’s playing hooky from work for some other reason that Bruce and the rest of the League don’t know about.

Neither of these ideas fills Bruce with any particular confidence.

But, as Bruce has often noted, the only way out, usually, is through.

 

*

 

The security at Clark’s apartment building has always appalled him – Bruce has thought occasionally of offering to have something better installed, but then, what would be the point? Clark doesn’t need it, and most likely wouldn’t want it.

The rain, light in the morning, has started to come down in swathes now, washing against the window of Bruce’s car where it sits across the road from Clark’s building. Bruce has been sitting there for some time, watching it – there’s no movement at the window he knows belongs to Clark; nothing at all to indicate there’s anything living inside.

He knows he shouldn’t be here – just one more thing to add to the long list of things he doesn’t need people to tell him. He hadn’t even told Alfred where he was going; he didn’t need to see the expression on his face, or his single raised eyebrow. In any case, just because he doesn’t tell Alfred doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. There’s not a lot that escapes him, after all.

Bruce raises a finger to his mouth, his eyes still trained on Clark’s window. The curtains are undrawn, and as he watches, the barest flicker of a shadow seems to pass on the other side of the glass.

It might have been nothing, but Bruce doesn’t think so.

He realises he should probably turn the key in the ignition and drive back the way he came. Clark doesn’t need him, and he certainly doesn’t _want_ him showing up uninvited at his house, barging in and asking questions that Bruce just _knows_ are going to be awkward.

But the way Clark had looked – sweat on his forehead, eyes unfocused, skin clammy – and the sick day from work… if something is _wrong_ with Clark, then it’s League business, and Bruce needs to know. If Clark doesn’t like it, then that’s basically tough shit. What affects Clark affects them all.

At least, that’s the thought in Bruce’s head as he opens his car door and then his umbrella, stepping out onto the curb. That’s what he tells himself as he hurries across the street, pulling his collar up against the rain.

There’s a long pause after he presses the buzzer for Clark’s apartment. When Clark does finally answer, all Bruce says is, “It’s me.”

Another long pause. “I know.”

For a moment, Bruce isn’t sure Clark is going to let him in, but then the security door buzzes, and Bruce pushes it open, heading up the stairs.

 

*

 

Clark can hear Bruce’s heavy tread on the steps long before he reaches his front door. But then, he’s been aware of him sitting outside in his car for at least the last two hours.

He’s not sure when he first became aware of it. He tries not to make a habit of listening in to anyone’s vital signs – but especially not Bruce’s. For any number of reasons, but chief amongst them being that Clark is fully aware that out of everyone he’s met, Bruce would like it the least.

But as he’d sat this morning, eyes closed, head resting on the back of the couch and just trying to _breathe_ , he couldn’t help but become aware of the low, steady beat of Bruce’s heart, from somewhere that he knew was close by.

This is how it’s been since he’s come back. It hadn’t been anything too concerning at first – nothing he couldn’t chalk up to having been dead for several months. Clark had figured there’d be readjustments – and of course there had been. For a while, it had been just like when he was a kid, and needed his mother to sing to him to keep him calm until he remembered that his powers were _his_ , and he could control them.

On some days, he’d wake up and find his powers had subsided almost to nothing – he couldn’t hear a thing, and when he tried, just as an experiment, to lift a filing cabinet at work, he couldn’t move it so much as an inch. But in the next second, everything had come flooding back, and it felt like the world was expanding too fast for him to understand: sounds and smells and tastes and everything else had come crashing in on him, as if they were trying to crush him under their weight.

Clark swallows. Bruce is on the second floor now.

The unpredictability of his powers hadn’t even been the worst thing, though. The worst thing had been the low hum that underpinned it all – the sound that had seemed to call to his blood, and set every cell in his body vibrating. He can feel it even now – operating on a frequency that is almost too low for him to make out, and yet, he can still feel its almost magnetic pull.

In a way, he isn’t surprised that Bruce is here now. He had seen him watching him at the last meeting of the League, his grey eyes trained on his face.

Clark supposes that he should have expected this. He knows Bruce doesn’t trust him – maybe he never will. Maybe the tacit, tenuous understanding that had been between them on the night he died hadn’t meant anything after all. Bruce set up the League while Clark was gone, and invited him to join it, but Clark knows that this is, more than likely, just a way of keeping a closer eye on him. Better to have him allied with them than out on his own. And, with the kryptonite gone, for the moment at least, it has to have entered Bruce’s calculations that he and Diana together have more chance of stopping him than any of them working alone.

Clark closes his eyes. Those are Bruce’s calculations. Clark wishes he could tell him they’re not necessary.

“Clark?”

Bruce’s voice outside his door coincides with another wave of dizziness, his blood seething in his veins. Cold sweat breaks out across his forehead, and he can feel his skin crawl – as if he’s trying to climb out of himself to answer the desperate sound that calls to him.

And Clark is not sure whether, having figured out where the pull originates from, he feels better or worse.

Swallowing heavily, Clark forces himself up from the couch, going to the door, and opens it. He knows he looks like hell, and Bruce’s reaction confirms it – he sucks in a breath when he sees his face, his eyes widening.

“Clark – what the hell –” Bruce cuts himself off, swallowing, the shock in his eyes quickly receding. He draws back into himself, his face becoming a blank mask. “Can I come in?”

Clark hesitates only a moment before saying, “Sure.”

His new apartment is smaller than the one he shared with Lois, but it’s cheap, and he doesn’t need much space. Which is just as well, seeing as this is about the limits of what his salary can stretch to, anyway. Bruce’s eyes are in constant motion as he comes inside, taking in every detail, storing them away in his memory for future use – whatever that might be.

This is the first time Bruce has ever been inside his apartment, and Clark is caught for a second, wondering what he makes of it. Back when he lived with Lois, there’d been bottles of wine on the counter (for her, seeing as his drinking extends only to some beers when he goes home), cookware hanging on a rack over the stove, lemonade in jars (the kind his mother had taught him to make), and a liberal sprinkling of Lois’ blouses and scarves over pretty much every available surface. Now, the apartment is sparse and empty – he doesn’t need to eat especially regularly, and it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm to cook when it’s just for him. Clark has always been neat, and he’s hardly had the time or the money to buy new things since… well, since he’s been back. So there’s not a lot here to say there’s anyone even living here at all.

He can see Bruce taking all this in – the single chair, the bare floorboards, the lack of cooking utensils – and noting it down. It’s the kind of thing he knows Bruce notices. Or not just notices – Bruce seems to inhale knowledge, sucking in every detail of every place he’s ever been in as if his life depends on it.

Which, Clark supposes, it frequently does.

In the silence that stands between them, Clark suddenly feels another roil of nausea overtake him, sweat sprouting on his forehead. The knuckles of his left hand go white where they’re still wrapped around the door handle, as slowly, he begins to slide his way down to the floor.

“Jesus, Clark –”

Bruce’s hands grab him under his arms before he can complete his descent, pulling him up. Clark tries to open his mouth to tell him he’s fine – even though he _knows_ that’s not true – but his mouth feels parched, and his tongue won’t form the words he wants. He feels the couch against his back and his head lolls back, his neck refusing to hold up the weight of his head.

His temples are pounding. Somewhere above him, he can vaguely make out a Bruce-shaped blur leaning over him, pulling his head forward, prying his eyelid open.

“Clark? For God’s sake, Clark, what’s happening?”

He can feel Bruce’s palm against his cheek, a slight burning as he slaps him gently to keep him awake – which is as strange as anything else about this.

He shouldn’t be able to feel it. Bruce isn’t even trying to hurt him. He shouldn’t be able to feel _any_ of this.

But then, none of this should even be happening in the first place. And just because he’s been able to figure _what_ is doing this to him doesn’t mean he understands _why_.

With effort, he opens his eyes. Bruce is looking down at him, face pale, eyes hard. His hand is still clamped around Clark’s jaw, preventing his head from falling back. Clark’s throat feels thick as he tries to swallow.

“Bruce – this isn’t – you don’t –”

“The hell I don’t.” Bruce’s voice is harsh. His hand doesn’t leave Clark’s face.

Clark grits his teeth, easing himself up to sit straight on the couch. Bruce’s proximity is almost unbearable to him – the warmth of his skin seems ten times what it should be, and his grip on his jaw is like a steel vice. And it’s been so long since someone – since _anyone_ – touched him that Clark honestly can’t say whether he finds it comforting or frightening.

“I’m okay now,” he says, and it’s not completely untrue. The nausea at least is subsiding. And he feels like he has some degree of control over his limbs again. He can talk.

Bruce gives him a long look, eyes flicking from his face down over his chest, which Clark is aware is still rising and falling a lot faster than it should be. Especially since he almost never has to breathe, usually.

But he backs off, standing and crossing his arms across his chest, looking down at Clark with an expression that very clearly says _I want an explanation for this._

Clark blinks. Even if he knew, really, what was happening to him, he wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about explaining it. Maybe he could to Diana. To Lois, of course, if he could bring himself to intrude on her in this way – which he certainly can’t. But not to Bruce. Bruce still seems wary around him – like he’s expecting at any moment for Clark to say… well, something, anyway. That he’s leaving the League. That he doesn’t need or want them. That the things that Bruce said and did mean there’ll never be anything more between them than the somewhat unfriendly acknowledgement that they’re more effective working together than apart.

He’d like to explain to Bruce that this isn’t the case: that the world he’s returned to is very different from the one he left, and that, if anything, it’s _him_ who needs the League. Perhaps more than even he realises. But Clark isn’t sure he can – and he isn’t sure he wants to see the doubt in Bruce’s eyes as he says it.

“Clark.”

Bruce’s voice is low and steady, and when Clark looks up at him, he finds Bruce watching him, eyes dark.

“What’s going on?”

Clark swallows. He realises Bruce isn’t going to leave until he gets an answer. And honestly… the fact that Bruce has even noticed his current difficulties and cared enough to come here to confront him about it makes Clark think that perhaps he’s been mistaken. Perhaps he –

“If it’s something that could affect the League, then you know I need to know about it.”

Clark almost laughs out loud, even through the sudden well of nausea that rises in his stomach. Of course. The League. That’s what Bruce is here about. He feels a little uncharitable at feeling let down – the League is important, after all, and Bruce hasn’t given him any expectations that he’d be here for any other reason, friendship being the least among them.

And Bruce is, of course, perfectly correct. If Clark can’t fulfil his role in the League right now, then the others need to know. They need to know that they can’t rely on him right now – not with his powers in such a state of flux, and him never knowing when the next wave is going to come over him, when it feels like the marrow is boiling in his bones.

Maybe Bruce doesn’t trust him right now, but Clark can’t help that. And he… he’d _like_ to start trusting Bruce more. He _does_ trust him. He just wishes he knew of some way for Bruce to see that. But Bruce is obviously still intent on keeping him at arm’s length, and perhaps Clark can’t blame him for that. Until his mother had told him that she’d discovered that Bruce Wayne had paid for his funeral, and had written him a letter demanding to know why, and he had responded with a card telling her to call on him whenever she needed anything, Clark hadn’t exactly been tripping over himself to make friends with him either, no matter how wrong he’d been about the Batman.

But if he wants Bruce to trust him, then, as Clark is perfectly aware, there’s really only one way to make that happen.

“It’s the ship,” he says, his voice coming out hard and gritty.

He watches Bruce’s brow furrow, eyes narrowing.

“The ship? The scout ship?”

Clark nods. He takes a deep breath, trying to figure out how to word this. “It wants something.”

 

*

 

Of all the things Bruce expected Clark to say… okay, well, in fact, he had no idea what he expected. He has eyes and ears at all of the docks, and he knows that no more kryptonite has come to light since the chunk Lex Luthor pulled out of the Indian Ocean. But since it’s the only thing he knows of that has ever put so much as a dent in Superman’s powers, he had supposed…

… well. It doesn’t matter what he supposed.

He stares down at Clark. His skin still looks clammy and his lips are parched, but his eyes are steady as he looks up at him.

“What do you mean?” Bruce hears himself ask after a long moment of silence. “How can it _want_ something? Is it alive?” He swallows. “Is it _sentient?_ ”

Clark shakes his head, wincing a little. “Not… not exactly. I don’t _think_. But it’s… calling to me. I don’t know how to explain it any other way.”

Bruce’s heart feels cold in his chest. “What does it want?”

For a long moment, Clark says nothing. He looks away from Bruce, eyes finding the corner of the room and staying there. “I think when Lex opened the Genesis Chamber, he… started something. Some process that it wants to complete – but it can’t. It’s stuck in a loop until it can get what it needs to finish its… its operation.” Clark swallows, his Adam’s apple dipping. “And I think… I think that’s why I came back.” His voice is soft. “I could feel it. Calling to me.”

Bruce blinks and takes a moment to try to think. Nothing Clark is saying makes any sense – but then, nothing about any of this makes sense. Nothing about Zod’s ships destroying half of Gotham or Lex Luthor creating monsters out of corpses or Clark’s existence at all makes sense.

This is something he _thought_ he’d been getting used to.

But if there’s something he realises he _really_ needs to learn, it’s that things can always get weirder.

Bruce clears his throat quietly. “I don’t – I don’t know what you want me to do with this information.”

Clark’s eyes flick up to him, capturing him in a blank, pale blue gaze, before he looks away again. “Nothing,” he says eventually. “But you asked, so I told you. And you’re right – you needed to know. I can’t… be relied on right now. Not until whatever this is stops.”

Looking down at Clark’s face, Bruce’s chest tightens. All right. It might be true he has no idea how to respond to this. But the same could be said of anything he’s faced over the past thirty years.

Bruce clears his throat.

“Is it safe for you to be alone right now?” he asks.

Clark doesn’t look up at him. “It's all right,” he says. “I don’t think... I mean, I’m not going to lose control of myself. My powers are too weak for anything right now anyway. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Now Clark does look up at him, and Bruce sees a flicker of surprise in his eyes. “I – I don’t know –”

“You’re not exactly achieving anything, sitting here by yourself,” Bruce tells him. “I don’t pretend for a second to know what you’re talking about, but it’s pretty clear you don’t know what’s going on either. Or else I _assume_ you would have done something about it by now.”

Bruce can see the first stirrings of irritation in Clark’s eyes. He’s probably not in the mood to be hounded right now – but Bruce isn’t exactly in the mood to be here at all, so Clark will just have to deal with it.

Clark holds his gaze for a second or two longer before dropping his eyes. “No,” he mutters. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

Bruce draws in a breath, before seating himself on Clark’s… well, it’s a box sitting in the middle of the room, so Bruce supposes it’s what he’s using as a coffee table right now. “You haven’t been to see...” Bruce checks himself, before continuing. “Have you been to the ship?”

There’s a pause before Clark shakes his head. “There’s an exclusion zone for a mile around it,” he says. “And you know how tight the security is. I don’t think so much as a fly can get in there without the military knowing about it. Especially not now that… well. Not now.”

Bruce doesn’t have to ask him to explain. It had taken him longer than he cares to admit to hack the server, but Bruce has read the classified report that was produced in the wake of the Doomsday episode and the death of Superman. He knows who got the blame for Luthor misappropriating Zod’s fingerprints and having access to the scout ship, and he knows what recommendations were made to restrict access to the crash site even further. The military is even twitchier about Kryptonian tech now than they were before. Which is saying something.

And looking at Clark now, Bruce doesn’t have to ask why he couldn’t just use his powers to evade the guards – and even if they _had_ seen him, what were they going to do, shoot him? Clark looks like a wreck. There’s dark circles under his eyes, and the sweat from earlier is still pasting his hair to his forehead. If he feels half as bad as he looks, he shouldn’t be going _anywhere._

“I get it,” Bruce says.

Outside, the rain lashes against the small window of Clark’s living room, and somewhere in the distance, Bruce hears a clap of thunder. Clark screws his eyes closed for a moment, wincing.

“It’s just a little… loud,” he says, when he notices Bruce’s look. “I learned how to control these things when I was a kid. But now…”

“We can… work this out,” Bruce says, slowly and steadily, but before he has a chance to second-guess himself. “I have access to the research that’s being done.” Something prompts him to be more truthful – or more accurate, in any case. “Or I can get it.”

Clark’s look speaks volumes. Or Bruce imagines it does, anyway.

“Is… Wayne Enterprises working on the ship?”

Bruce shakes his head, once. “No. Kord Industries took over the contract from LexCorp. WayneTech doesn’t tender for military contracts.”

Clark’s forehead creases a little, and Bruce can almost see the question forming in his mind: _So you have access to their research… how?_ The question he asks instead, however, is, “Where would we go? Your offices in Metropolis?”

Bruce shakes his head. “No. The Cave.”

He can count on his fingers the number of people he’s invited into the Batcave, but he’s not having a sickly-looking Clark Kent raising questions by lying around in his Metropolis labs, or getting his own digital fingerprints all over whatever he has to do to get at the things Kord Industries has learned about the scout ship.

Clark’s eyes widen, and he sucks in a quick breath. “No. I can’t do that.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Any particular reason?” If Clark is going to be stubborn about this, then he really doesn’t know if he has the patience for it.

Clark swallows, his jaw clenching. He looks away, closing his eyes. “It… the ship.” He draws in another deep breath. “It doesn’t like it when I get too far away. It… tries to call me back. And it… it _hurts._ ” He looks up at Bruce, his eyes piercing. “Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t stay in Kansas longer? Why I came back to Metropolis so soon? I didn’t exactly _want_ to. But…”

The cold hand clenching about Bruce’s heart is back. There’s a long silence, and Clark has that hunted look in his eye again, as if he’s waiting for something to pounce.

“All right,” Bruce says quietly, not sure what else he _can_ say. Nothing that won’t sound completely ludicrous, given the current circumstances, anyway.

But this is how he’s felt all too often, lately – there are some things in the world that can’t be forced to make sense. And now Clark – _Superman_ – is staring at him, his eyes wide, with an expression that’s almost begging him to help him; or at least to _understand_ him.

“Have you… told anyone else about this?” Bruce asks him.

Clark’s eyes flicker away. “No. I just… I don’t know who to tell.” He swallows. “My mother… worries. A lot. I can’t go back to Kansas and –” the briefest, lightest of laughs – “she hates the city, Bruce. _Hates_ it.”

Clark won’t meet his eyes, and he hunches over slightly, almost as if he’s trying to curl into himself and hide. There’s more here that Clark’s not saying, but Bruce isn’t going to pry just now.

Bruce swallows dryly. “Lois?”

A tic runs the full length of Clark’s face. “She’s… I’m not – I can’t just –”

He doesn’t need to continue, and Bruce knows he’s right, anyway. Diana has told him about how Lois is doing these days, and the way she threw herself into her work, and how utterly desperate she had been to claw her life back and move forward without Clark. She needs time. Space. And Clark is too gentle to demand she give him anything except what she’s prepared to give.

It’s one of the things he understands about Clark now. The things he _could_ do, but doesn’t.

Except now, when he’s sitting and shivering on his couch, unable to do a single thing as another clap of thunder sounds, and Bruce watches as Clark closes his eyes, as if trying to shut the world out of his head.

“I can help you,” Bruce says, and Clark opens his eyes.

 

*

 

He meets Diana at a restaurant on the waterfront.

They’ve finished their mains, and Diana is rolling the stem of her wine glass between her thumb and forefinger and looking out over the harbour, the lights of the city reflected in the black water.

“You’re staying with him,” she says, after the waiter has shown them the dessert menu, and Bruce has declined it.

“Only for a couple of days,” Bruce says. “And not at his place.”

“Where, then?” Diana asks. “And why only a couple of days?”

Bruce dodges her first question. “That’s how long Alfred thinks it’ll take to hack into Kord Industries and forge the security clearances I need.”

Diana doesn’t answer for a long moment, before sighing and turning to look at him. “This seems unnecessarily hazardous.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

The ghost of a smile flits across Diana’s lips. “For what you want to do? No.”

Bruce can’t help but feel there’s some kind of double meaning to her words, but with Diana, words can be excruciatingly hard to pin down, when she wants them to be.

“And you never told me where you’re staying,” she says.

“The Plaza,” Bruce tells her. “I took the penthouse suite. There’s no way it’d go unnoticed that I was staying if we were at his place. It’s a box, and the stairwell is so narrow I have to go up it sideways.”

“Whereas Clark, going in and out of the Plaza penthouse, on a journalist’s salary…?”

“He’s obviously not checked in under his own name. Or mine. Though it’s hardly suspicious for me to be seen going in there.” Bruce swallows. “And believe me, he’s staying put. He’s not going in or out of anywhere.”

Diana’s eyes narrow. “Is it that bad?”

Looking away from her, Bruce focuses on the lights blinking on top of the Wayne Enterprises building, not so far distant from where they are. He’d left Clark wrapped in a quilt on the hotel bed, still sweating, and seemingly in a feverish doze. He’d refused food, and Bruce wasn’t about to force him to eat.

He knew he’d have to get back to him soon. He didn’t like the thought of leaving him alone when he was like this, but he’d wanted to explain to Diana in person about what was going on.

“I don’t know how bad it is,” Bruce tells her. “I don’t know anything. Clark doesn’t either. The only thing he can tell me is that the ship wants something, and that this wasn’t happening in the year and a half before Lex Luthor opened the… chamber, whatever it is, where he created Doomsday.”

He’d shared the report with Diana. He’d felt she needed to know. But considering the scientists who’d inspected the ship hadn’t even understood what they were looking at, it had been… rather vague on certain points.

“I need to go,” he says, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t leave him alone for so long.”

Diana leans back in her seat. “You talk like he can’t take care of himself. I know you want to help him, but –”

Bruce’s lip curls. They do this, every now and then. They’ve known each other for several months now, and he knows she believes in the League, and was instrumental in convincing Arthur to join them, however tenuously. But they still butt heads every now and then, and Bruce isn’t sure she has ever quite got over her first impression of him as a boorish manchild, regardless of whatever else he is too.

“Do I ask you why you make so many housecalls to the widow Lane in – where is she living now? Berlin?” he says, with exactly as much cruelty in his voice as he intends.

Diana’s mouth snaps shut, and she looks away. “It’s not what you think,” she says softly, after a long pause. “She’s lonely. And she's frightened.”

Bruce looks at the pale crescent of her face in the half-light. “So is he,” he says.

 

*

 

Clark wakes up when he hears the hotel room door close. He’d been drifting in and out of a light doze – he slightly remembers Bruce telling him he was going out, just for an hour or two, and to stay put in the meantime.

Bruce hadn’t had to tell him to do that, though – Clark is fairly certain he couldn’t have gotten up and left even if he’d wanted to. Nothing in his body feels like it should. His throat is dry, his eyelids heavy. His bones feel fragile, almost like they’re hollow, and his skin is sensitive to even the lightest touch. Even the soft cotton sheets of the criminally expensive hotel bed feel barely tolerable at the moment, and he would strip them off if only he didn’t feel quite so cold.

He shudders, feeling the movement rattle down his spine.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce’s voice is soft, but Clark still hears it like he’s speaking directly into his eardrum.

Blinking, he looks up to find Bruce standing by the bed looking down at him, hands in his coat pockets, cashmere scarf still draped over his shoulders. Clark can see droplets of rain shining on the material, reflecting the golden light of the lamp.

“Not so good,” he croaks after a moment, trying to shift to sit up. He struggles for a moment, before feeling Bruce’s warm hand against his shoulder blade, repositioning the pillow behind him against the bedhead. Clark almost flinches away from him – not because it’s painful, but because it’s so unexpected.

Bruce withdraws quickly, though – maybe he misinterpreted things and thought he’d prefer not to be touched. Or at least, not to be touched by _him._ Clark isn’t really sure which.

“It’s okay,” he says, easing himself back against the pillows. “I don’t – I mean, it’s not –”

Bruce has already turned away, however, and is opening the wardrobe, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up inside, and Clark can’t see his face.

“I’m having Alfred work on getting us security clearances for the scout ship,” Bruce says, in a tone that suggests he could be commenting on what terrible weather they’ve been having lately.

Clark’s head feels foggy as he tries to sort through how this could happen – they’ve already discussed this, and Clark happens to know that they don’t just hand those things out like candy, and especially not to a) journalists, and b) billionaire playboys. Clark’s honestly hard-pressed to think of which one of them they’d reject faster.

Then it hits him.

“You mean _forge_ security clearances.”

Bruce glances over his shoulder. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes. Obviously,” Clark says. “Aside from anything else, do you really think it’s worth the risk?”

“I want you to look at your face in the mirror right now and tell me if you don’t think it’s worth it,” Bruce says. “Because if you could see yourself –”

“If anyone goes to the ship,” Clark says, cutting him off, “it’ll be me. And me only.”

Bruce stares down at him a moment, before shaking his head and turning away, going to the decanter of scotch on the sideboard. “Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?”

“Not to me.” Clark swallows, his throat parched. He reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand, but his hand is shaking too much to get a firm grip. In the next second, however, Bruce has lifted it up, passing it to him. Setting his jaw, Clark wills his fingers to do what he’s telling them to do and wrap themselves around the glass, but it’s futile. It’s like he no longer has access to the muscles he needs.

“Just… wait.”

Bruce sounds mildly exasperated as he lifts the cup himself, pressing the rim to Clark’s lips.

Clark is so startled that he pulls back a little, but then he feels the coolness against his lips and opens his mouth, swallowing as the water spills down his throat. It feels even better than he thought it would, and he closes his eyes, drinking the liquid down, as fast as Bruce will let him.

“Feel better?” Bruce asks when the glass is empty.

Clark licks his lips, wanting to feel annoyed at how helpless he feels, and listening for a mocking undertone in Bruce’s voice. But there isn’t one, and the truth is he _does_ feel better. He’s too tired to feel angry. And too grateful to feel irritated that it’s Bruce, of all people, who’s seeing him like this.

Bruce sets the glass back down before he turns to him. “If it’s dangerous for me, then it’s dangerous for you. At the moment, anyway,” he says. He leans back. “And far be it for me to be the one to point this out, but I sure don’t think it has your best interests at heart right now.”

Clark shakes his head stubbornly. “No. You’re wrong. My father – my _biological_ father – explained this to me. He had… programmed himself, somehow, into the command key he sent with me. And Lois told me…” he swallows, trying to think clearly enough to explain things. “Lois told me he was able to upload himself to the mainframe of Zod’s ship, and control it, show her what to do. I thought that in that case, he might still be there, in the scout ship. He can explain…”

Clark knows he’s rambling, and he cuts himself off when he sees the expression on Bruce’s face. At first, he thinks Bruce is looking at him like that because he must sound like a lunatic, but then he realises it’s something altogether different.

 

*

 

In the end, it’s more than a couple of days.

Bruce has never thought of Ted Kord as anything more than a dilettante in the world of business – an _actual_ dilettante, not the one that he himself pretends to be – but he does seem to have some spectacularly good people working for him.

Bruce knows he’s badgering Alfred, who is working as quickly as he can. But every time Alfred thinks he’s found a loophole, or some way into the Kord Industries systems, it turns out to be a dead end, or he can’t get any further without setting off some artfully constructed tripwire that a lesser man might have missed.

Bruce is more frustrated than he wants to let on, but he knows he wouldn’t be doing any better. The only thing he can do is wait.

He can wait. Patience is essential in what he does – but he has never liked it.

Leaning back in his chair, Bruce cracks his neck and looks out the penthouse window at the night beyond. It’s only newly dark, but it’s already pitch black over Gotham, just visible in the distance. He’s been away for several days now, and while Diana has promised she’ll take care of anything urgent, he can still feel the urge to be out tugging at him. But this is what having colleagues is like, he supposes. He’s been on his own for so long that it’s going to take some getting used to.

He knows he can trust Diana. They might not exactly like each other – not yet, at least – but unreliable she is not.

Releasing a long breath, Bruce stands and goes to the kitchenette, where there’s a fresh plunger of coffee brewing. He already knows he won’t sleep tonight, so there’s not much point in trying.

Clark has mainly been sleeping today – or as far as Bruce can tell, he has been. He glances up when he hears the rustle of sheets, and then the sound of Clark coughing.

Bruce doesn’t want to admit to himself just how quickly he stands up and goes to the door, leaving his coffee on the table behind him.

Standing in the doorway, he can see Clark’s form on the bed; but if he’s sleeping, it looks anything but restful. The quilt has been kicked aside, the sheets tangled around his legs; as he watches, Clark rolls onto his back and coughs again, the sound thick and wet, almost as if he’s choking.

“Clark?” Bruce comes into the room without another thought, reaching over to switch on the lamp on the nightstand. He sucks in a breath when his eyes adjust to the sudden burst of light. Half of Clark’s face and the entire front of his t-shirt are soaked in blood – when he’d rolled onto his back he must have been choking on it.

“Jesus Christ, Clark –” Bruce starts to say as Clark looks up at him, bewildered, as if he’s not quite sure what’s happening. Then his eyebrows draw together and he raises a hand to his face, wiping blood onto his fingers and staring down at it as if he doesn’t recognise what it is.

“Sit up.” Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder, easing him upright. Clark still doesn’t seem to know what’s happening to him, and he leans forward, sagging at the waist so his head comes to rest against the juncture of Bruce’s neck and shoulder. His breath feels warm, and Bruce can feel a trickle of blood run down his collar.

“Come on,” he says quietly, trying to ease Clark away from him – he’s an almost dead weight against him. Bruce knows he really should outweigh him, but Clark seems heavier than he should. “Can you stand? I need to get you under better light.”

“I think so,” Clark says, voice a little muffled by the blood that fills his mouth.

Bruce slings an arm around him, helping him to the bathroom. Once they’re inside, Bruce eases Clark down onto the closed toilet and turns on the lights, all of them, flooding the room with bright white light.

Taking a handtowel, Bruce runs it under warm water, before turning back to where Clark is sitting, his breathing shallow and rapid. It’s probably a nose bleed, Bruce figures – Clark looks flushed, and he’s obviously sweating far more than usual. He crouches down, wiping the towel over Clark’s nostrils, but it quickly becomes clear that that’s not the source of the blood. Frowning, Bruce wipes more of the blood away from Clark’s face, working his way slowly down, until finally –

Bruce leans back, hand hovering, the towel dripping bloody water onto the floor between them.

Clark has bitten almost clean through his lower lip, and it’s from here that he’s been bleeding.

“Bruce?” Clark has opened his eyes and is looking up at him as if mildly dazed. “What’s – what’s going on?”

“You… bit yourself,” Bruce says, keeping his voice low. “It’s bleeding. A little.”

Clark tries to move his head, but Bruce raises his hand, holding it still. He brings the towel back to his face, cleaning the blood away. Clark winces slightly as the towel moves over his skin, but he doesn’t try to move away.

“I was dreaming,” he says vaguely, as Bruce cleans him up. When Bruce glances up, Clark has his eyes closed again, his eyebrows pulled together, forehead creased.

Bruce doesn’t answer – to be honest, he’d rather Clark wasn’t talking at all right now. His lower lip is swollen, as if Clark has been worrying at it in his sleep, slowly wearing it down. Bruce carefully wipes around it, trying not to hurt him, and highly aware that he’s more sensitive than usual.

“I wish I could remember –” Clark starts again when Bruce stands to rinse the towel again. Looking into the mirror, Bruce inhales quickly as he sees Clark’s blood on the collar of his shirt, and smeared against the skin of his throat. Quickly, he lifts the damp towel, washing it away.

“Don’t try to talk right now,” Bruce says, turning back to him. But if Clark has ever been inclined to listen to him, he’s certainly not now.

“I was – I think I was –” he starts to say, but then his eyes flash wide open suddenly, moving to where Bruce is standing by the mirror. He doesn’t say anything else, just shifts uncomfortably on the toilet lid, before letting his eyes fall shut again.

Bruce crouches in front of him again, but it soon becomes clear that one man and a towel is not going to do much good against the mess Clark has made of himself.

“Can you stand up?” Bruce asks, standing and tossing the towel into the sink. “I think you should have a shower. At the very least, you need to change your clothes.”

Clark blinks up at him a moment before apparently catching sight of himself in the mirror for the first time, his eyes going wide, and his mouth forming a surprised ‘O’.

“I didn’t realise – is that from biting my lip?”

Bruce doesn’t answer him – it doesn’t seem necessary. Clark is staring at himself, eyes wide, as if…

… as if he’s never seen that much blood before. At least, not his own.

Or perhaps he has. Bruce swallows suddenly, as he realises that the bright bloodstain on Clark’s white undershirt is across the same place as the gigantic, gaping hole Doomsday had put right through him – and even if Clark hasn’t made the connection, it’s much too close to home for Bruce to feel comfortable with. He turns away, opening the glass shower door and reaching inside. The water gushes out of the showerhead, warm and clean, pattering into the golden brown of the marble floor.

“Wash yourself off,” he says. “When you’re done, we’ll get you back to bed.”

Clark doesn’t answer him, but turns to look at him vaguely, as if he hasn’t quite understood. Bruce turns away, going back to the bedroom – but he leaves the door open. He waits a moment, until he hears the sound of the shower door closing, and the sound of the water changes to the quiet patter of hitting skin rather than tile.

Switching on the bedroom light, he surveys the damage to the hotel bed linen – the pillow is a wreck, but the sheets are fine. It seems like Clark had kicked them away from himself, which is good, because the last thing he feels like doing is calling a turndown service right now. He tosses the pillow into the corner of the room. He can deal with it later.

Bruce is just beginning to unclench his jaw when he hears a sudden, fleshy _slap_ from the bathroom, like a body hitting the floor. Whirling around, he turns to see Clark leaning heavily against the wall of the shower, his back to him, slowly sliding down to the floor.

“Christ, Clark –” Bruce opens the door, grabbing Clark’s shoulder and turning him to face him. His eyes are closed and there’s still the faintest smear of blood over his chin. His pulse is shivering in his throat, faster than it should be, his face pale. “Fuck, Clark, can you hear me?”

Clark opens his eyes, gazing at him dopily, and Bruce can’t actually be sure for a moment he _hasn’t_ smacked his head – which is all Bruce needs right now, being responsible for Superman slipping in the shower and bashing his brains out. As if he doesn’t have enough to feel guilty for already.

“I just – I’m sorry,” Clark says, slurring a little.

“It doesn’t matter.” Bruce sighs. “Maybe this was a bad idea. Come on.” He reaches up, shutting the water off. He leaves Clark where he is, slumped against the side of the shower while he grabs a towel. “Can you stand?”

“I think so,” Clark says, but in the end he needs Bruce’s help for that too. He’s shivering, though not, Bruce thinks, from the cold. His teeth are chattering in his head in the way only a fever can make them – the way Bruce had been shaking once when he’d had no choice but to jump into the Monchant River and got a face full of giardia.  

Clark does manage to stand under his own power, but once he’s up he leans against Bruce, his forehead resting against his collarbone. Bruce swallows, wrapping the towel around Clark’s shoulders and pulling it tight around him. After a moment, Clark raises his head, cheek grazing Bruce’s throat, and he feels the light flick of his eyelashes against his neck.

For a moment, Bruce finds his mind has gone perfectly still, his head clear, thoughts blank. Clark’s skin is warm against him, still wet from the shower, as long shivers pass through his body.

“I’m sorry, Bruce,” Clark mutters softly. “I didn’t mean to put you to this much trouble.”

“It’s fine,” Bruce says shortly, and he feels Clark swallow, his Adam’s apple sliding against Bruce’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

Clark seems to agree with that – or at least, he doesn’t protest. Bruce guides him back into the bedroom and he flops down on the bed on his back, discarding the towel. Bruce resists the urge to clear his throat, but he averts his eyes – he tries not to see anything that might make Clark feel embarrassed when he’s in his right mind.

He’s not quite quick enough, however, and he can see the pulse that jumps in Clark’s groin, and the way his half-hard cock shifts against his thigh as he settles on the bed.

Clark rolls over, falling into a shallow sleep almost immediately, naked and uncovered, and Bruce stands by the bed for a long moment before he turns away.

 

*

Clark wakes up to the smell of toast and coffee. His head feels surprisingly clear, for once, and when he sits up he sees Bruce sitting at the table out in the living area of the suite, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. He’s about to call out to him when a sudden memory surfaces in his head – had Bruce woken him last night? Had he –

Frowning, Clark looks down, and it comes to him suddenly that he’s naked. He knows he didn’t go to bed like that, and for a moment, he’s confused, before it all comes rushing back to him. He can feel his cheeks going red, his heart pounding in embarrassment – and then he notices too, that the sheet next to him is sticky, and there’s –

Clark jumps out of bed as quickly as he can and goes to the bathroom; he sees his clothes, rumpled and bloody, in a heap on the floor, but he barely takes notice of them. Running the faucet, he splashes warm water over his thigh and belly, cleaning away the come that’s still sticky against his skin. This hasn’t happened to him since he was an adolescent – and it was embarrassing enough then. And if he’s being honest, it wasn’t _only_ that his mother worries and that she hates the city that meant he didn’t want to involve her in this. It’s because of this, too. The fact that four out of five nights he wakes up from what passes as sleep for him these days with a hard dick and a head full of only partially remembered things. He can only _imagine_ trying to explain this to her. But he’d prefer not to.

To be honest, he’d prefer not even to think about this too closely himself.

A knock on the bathroom door startles him out of his embarrassed reverie.

“Clark?”

Bruce’s voice is cool, but Clark knows if he doesn’t answer, Bruce is liable to put his shoulder to the door and bust through it as if it’s made of plywood.

“I’m fine,” he says hastily – and it’s true, he feels better than he has in weeks. He grabs his discarded boxer shorts from the floor and slips into them, but decides against wearing the t-shirt. It’s stiff with dried blood, and Clark kicks it out of sight.

Bruce is waiting for him in the bedroom when he opens the door. He feels… self-conscious, and not just because he’s mostly naked. He recalls only some of what happened last night, and he’s not entirely sure what Bruce might have seen. Or heard. Or anything else.

And Bruce’s expression certainly isn’t giving anything away.

“I ordered you breakfast,” Bruce says, voice cool. “If you feel up to eating.”

Clark turns away, slipping on one of the ridiculously fluffy hotel robes. “I… sure. That sounds good,” he says. He _does_ actually feel like he could eat. Hungry, even.

He follows Bruce out to the living room, where there’s coffee and a breadbasket waiting for him. He’s a little disappointed – when Bruce had said _breakfast_ , he’d envisioned something with bacon, at least. Also eggs, preferably.

Bruce must have interpreted his look, because he shrugs unapologetically. “Don’t overdo it.”

He’s right, and Clark knows it. He contents himself with a buttered roll and coffee – black and without sugar, just how he hates it.

A million questions swirl in Clark’s head – the first time since he came here that he’s been clear-headed enough even to _have_ questions. “Has Alfred had any luck yet?” is what he settles on, though he still doesn’t know if he approves of this plan.

Bruce shakes his head. “Not yet. It’s… harder than we anticipated it would be. It may be we have to take a different approach.”

Clark cocks his head. Gently, he flexes his arm. He thinks he can feel some of his strength returning. It’s possible he could fly to the ship today, and –

“If you feel you can stay here by yourself, I may go pay a visit to the president of Kord Industries.”

Clark blinks. “Is he a friend of yours?” It’s a stupid question – of course he is. Bruce knows everyone worth knowing in business.

“An acquaintance,” Bruce says. “We have some business ventures in common. Nothing it wasn’t too hard to set up a meeting about.”

“Do you think he’ll let you –” Clark starts to say, before Bruce cuts him off with a curt shake of his head.

“Of course he won’t. But he doesn’t need to.”

Clark opens his mouth, before snapping it shut again before he can ask another stupid question.

“You stay here,” Bruce says. “I don’t care how good you feel.”

Clark looks down at the partially eaten roll in front of him. He’s about to tell Bruce he’s fine, but then a curl of nausea unrolls through his stomach, and he has to swallow down the bile that surges up his throat.

He knew it was too good to be true.

“I will,” he says, before he stands, feeling shaky. He couldn’t leave now, even if he wanted to. He doubts he’d make it to the elevators. Shivering, Clark closes his eyes. He hates this – _hates_ it. He’s never felt so weak before. So completely helpless. If it really is the scout ship that’s doing this to him, Clark is having trouble figuring out what its plan is.

Behind him, he hears Bruce stand, and pause. “Will you be all right?”

Clark swallows. “I’m fine,” he says.

 

*

 

It’s night when Clark opens his eyes. He’s not in the hotel room anymore – there’s nothing around him but the coolness of the night air.

He knows he should feel disoriented, but he doesn’t – there is no wind, and no sound. There’s nothing intruding on his senses. Instead, he feels nothing but total calm, as if he is exactly where he should be. Everything is dark, but he knows where he’s going as he steps forward – and the ship rises in front of him, as if it has been waiting there for all time to claim him.

If he were thinking, he might notice how strange it is for no one else to be around; that the scout ship has been left so completely unguarded. But there’s nothing else in his mind aside from the low, insistent hum of the ship, pulling at him and drawing him forward. The only sound outside of himself is the cold, metallic sound of his footsteps as he makes his way towards the Genesis Chamber.

The ship becomes warmer the closer he gets, until he can feel the glow of warmth on his skin, as he stands overlooking the place where Luthor had birthed Doomsday; the deathbeds of whatever Kryptonians might one day have settled on Earth. Clark takes one step down from the metal gantry, and his leg is immediately swallowed to the calf by the fluid that coats the floor. It’s warm and slightly viscous, and Clark can feel it clinging to him as he wades deeper in, until it’s swirling around his waist.

The dark pull he feels in every cell in his body finally settles, and is replaced by a chattering voice in his head – but the words slide over each other, crashing together inside his skull, until they form one, long, sibilant roar between his ears.

Clark staggers beneath the weight of it, raising his hands to his ears, but that does nothing to drown it out – not when it’s coming from _inside_ his head. Gritting his teeth, he tries to stay upright, but he can feel _something_ dragging him down as the chattering in his head grows louder. Finally, he can make out individual words, and he grabs at them as they fly past: _the Codex, the Codex, the Codex, **the Codex…**_

It means nothing to him – less than nothing – but it doesn’t matter as he finally loses his footing and sinks down into the mire of the ship’s floor, the fluid surging up to claim him. Clark doesn’t even have the strength to fight against it as he feels it pulling him down, filling his ears, his nostrils, his mouth…

“Clark? _Clark?_ ”

Bruce’s voice cuts through the chattering in his brain and the rising panic in his chest.

Clark arches up, gasping for breath, only half awake and barely aware of anything around him. It takes him a long moment to realise that his limbs are tangled in the hotel sheets, which are soaked through with sweat, and Bruce’s hands are on his shoulders, trying to hold him down as he twists away, fists bunched.

The taste of the thick liquid of the Genesis Chamber is still heavy on his tongue, and his throat still feels filled with it. Clark coughs as if he’s trying to choke up his own lungs, his muscles burning, fear seething in his veins.

But despite the panic, and despite the pain, Clark can still feel the warmth of the liquid around him. There’s heat in his belly and between his legs, and Bruce’s hands on his shoulders feel too heavy, too warm, and too solid.

“Clark. Stop.”

Bruce’s voice is infinitely reasonable, but Clark can barely hear him. His veins feel like threads of fire running through him, drawing his muscles tight, as he reaches up, feeling Bruce’s skin beneath his palms, the unshaved bristles on his cheek, and the short, coarse hair on the nape of neck. He doesn’t know what he needs, only that his chest feels like it’ll explode if he doesn’t get it. Everything in him feels strained to breaking point, the blood between his legs thick, mouth open and dry.

“Clark, what can I do? What do you need?”

Clark blinks, trying to focus, trying to find the words he needs. Bruce’s eyes are hard as he looks down at him, lips slightly parted as he breathes with the exertion of trying to keep Clark still.

“I don’t – I don’t –” Clark starts to say, before Bruce’s eyes slide away from his face, moving down his body to where the damp sheets are stretched over the hardening rod of his cock.

Grimacing, Clark tries to twist away, feeling embarrassment burning up his throat and over his cheeks. He can barely think straight, but he knows this is bad – that this is something he _should_ be ashamed of, this lack of control over his own body, even after all the years he’s spent learning how.

Clark can’t see Bruce’s face, but he sees his Adam’s apple dip as he swallows, his chest rise with his surprised inhalation.

“I—I’m sorry,” Clark manages to get out, and he would turn away, if only Bruce’s hands weren’t still planted on his shoulders, keeping him where he is.

“Don’t be.” Bruce’s voice is quiet and slightly hoarse.

Clark bites his lip, closing his eyes. “It’s the ship,” he says, knowing his voice sounds strained. “I don’t know why. But… it wants…”

Bruce says nothing. Without even wanting to, Clark can hear his own heartbeat in his chest, and the air as it enters and then leaves his lungs. Darkness wells up in him again, coating him the same way the scout ship’s viscous fluid had in his dream. Clark groans through his teeth, trying to hold it back, but the wave is inexorable, drawing him down and keeping him there.

The slide of the sheets against his hot skin is almost unbearable, and he can feel his cock straining against them, leaking and leaving damp trails across them when he moves his hips in an unconscious roll. And oh _God_ Clark knows what he wants and what he needs, but not like this.

“Clark.”

Bruce’s voice is just on the edge of his hearing, and he turns towards it, blind as a newborn kitten, trying to sense its way to safety.

“Clark, you need to trust me.”

 _Trust him?_ Of course Clark does – he always has. Ever since he’s come back, he’s trusted him. How could he not? He remembers what happened on the night he died, and he remembers the things Bruce said to him. He remembers how wrong he was in his assumptions, and how unjust.

He wants to tell Bruce this – _has_ wanted to tell him, for so long now. But he still doesn’t understand Bruce’s words until he feels his hand leave his shoulder and slip down his body, slick with sweat and wound in the bedsheets, and stopping only when it reaches his hip.

The meaning of what Bruce said comes to him at last, breaking through the haze his mind has drifted into. Clark groans, throwing his head back and arching his back as Bruce’s hand finds him, wrapping around his hard length. His blood pounds in his ears, and he can already feel his orgasm curling up his spine, his cock leaking into Bruce’s palm.

“Bruce, please,” are the only words he can say, as Bruce’s fingers tighten around him. “ _Please._ ”

Clark can do nothing but let Bruce’s hand work him over, his fingers tight around him, as he spirals closer and closer to the edge. He knows he’s never before been this hard, this swollen, and things have _never_ felt like this before – Clark hisses, curling his fists into the bedsheets as Bruce’s hand quickens its pace, squeezing, and fanning white hot flames along his nerves. Clark can’t even feel the embarrassment of Bruce seeing him like this anymore, that it’s Bruce who’s doing this – he can’t bring himself to care about anything except the release that’s building within him, rising in him like a wave, making his back arch and his toes curl.

“I – ” he tries to say, but that’s as far as he gets before Bruce’s hand tightens, and whatever Clark might have said is overtaken by a desperate moan.

He can’t last – he doesn’t even want to. All he wants is to find his way back to sanity, to stop this senseless heat in his blood and be able to _think_ again. His hips jerk, shuddering, and he hears himself cry out, twisting on the bed, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. Bruce’s hand never falters, drawing him towards his climax; and when Clark finally does come, emptying himself completely into his palm, he continues to rub him until he’s spent, and lies shuddering weakly on the bed, utterly drained.

“Sleep,” Bruce commands as he withdraws his hand, making Clark whine softly. He misses the touch immediately, but for the first time in weeks he feels… not peaceful, exactly, but his body no longer feels like it’s boiling itself alive. He licks his lips, eyelids heavy, and he curls over on the bed as sleep engulfs him.

 

*

 

Bruce hasn’t slept. Dawn is still some time away, and the only light in the room is from his laptop screen. The dregs of his coffee have long since gone cold in the cup by his elbow, and he hasn’t felt like eating.

Every now and then, he glances up through the long sliding doors that separate the penthouse lounge from the bedroom, but Clark, sleeping curled up on his side, hasn’t stirred.

He’s been sleeping like the dead ever since… ever since last night. Bruce swallows. He hadn’t been asleep, so he’d heard it when Clark had started twisting in his bed, muttering things under his breath that didn’t make any sense. Bruce had watched him for a while, not sure what to do, or whether waking him might make things worse. But when Clark had opened his eyes of his own accord, he’d reminded Bruce of a frantic animal caught in a trap, who hadn't yet figured out how to gnaw its own leg off to escape.

Bruce sneers. Is this what he’s going to tell himself now? That he’d done nothing other than what he’d thought Clark _wanted_ him to do?

Clenching his jaw, Bruce stares down at his computer screen. His trip to Kord Industries’ Metropolis headquarters had been… instructive. Alfred had spent the afternoon unencrypting the data Bruce purloined, sorting the wheat from the chaff, and sending on the relevant parts. Bruce has been engrossed in it, unmoving as he reads line after line of the reports that Kord’s scientists have put together from their studies.

A lot of it has been unhelpful – most of it has been reports of failure and frustration about how few of its secrets the ship will give up. Bruce is about to give up and go get another coffee, until his email client chimes, and a message with Alfred’s name and the subject line _Possibly relevant_ appears in the corner of his screen.

Clicking on the message, Bruce opens it up, scrolling down.

_Sir –_

_My apologies for not including this in earlier messages. It proved a tougher nut to crack than some of the others, but, I believe, worth the effort._

Alfred isn’t joking. The pale rose of dawn rising is behind him, stretching slowly across the plush carpet of the suite, but he’s so entirely engrossed in the report before him that he barely notices it. His eyes skitter from one line to the next, and he has to force himself to go back and read carefully.

_Evidence suggests Scout Ship 0344 has limited self-repair capabilities. System repairs were initiated by Luthor, A. 0344 now indicates operational at 50% efficiency. If command of the ship could be taken, flight is a possibility, but as of writing 0344 still recognises the extra-terrestrial known as Dru-Zod as commander._

Bruce is tired, and he’s grateful that Alfred has been thoughtful enough to include the reports written in lay terms, produced for the politicians and military non-scientists. He scrolls down, searching for something more.

_Inner section of 0334 remains closed after A.L.’s removal. As of writing, it has not been able to be reopened. Retrievable data indicates the purpose of the chamber – referred to as the ‘Genesis Chamber’ – is the creation of genetically engineered life forms. As access to the chamber cannot at this time be obtained, further research opportunities are limited._

Bruce sits back in his chair, staring ahead of him blankly. The things Clark said to him on the very first day he went to see him – _Luthor started something. Some process that it wants to complete_ – are starting, now, to make sense to him. In the most chilling of ways. His eyes flick back to his computer screen, resting on the words _genetic engineering_. Is that, then, how Clark was created? He had said he had a biological father, but…

Bruce shakes his head. That’s not important. These are things he can find out later. Bruce glances towards the bedroom door. Perhaps Clark would even tell him, if he asks. Bruce glances down at his hand where it rests against the glass table top before looking away, feeling disgust at himself curl in his belly.

He pages down, skimming the report.

_Despite the ship remaining in an apparently dormant state, the limited access we have obtained shows that 0344’s mainframe is running to 95% of its current capacity. As yet, aside from 0344’s self-repair operations, we have no explanation for this apparent anomaly._

Bruce understands the sheer amount of power the scout ship needed to suck from the city in order to create Doomsday. But if it wasn’t actively in the act of creating… and yet, was still almost reaching the limits of its operational capacity…

_I could feel it. Calling to me._

Bruce swallows. The ship wants Clark. He knows that already. But now he thinks he’s beginning to understand what _for._

Bruce looks down at his clenched fist again. He recalls how hot Clark’s skin had been the night before – how he’d arched up into his touch, as if seeking more – wanting something more than what Bruce was giving him. Bruce hadn’t been able to look at himself in the mirror afterwards, while he was washing his hands in the bathroom sink. Regardless of anything else, it’s clear Clark isn’t in his right mind just now. Whatever the ship is doing to him, he wouldn’t be acting this way if it weren’t for that – he wouldn’t be allowing Bruce to touch him in the way he has. Not in the shower, and not in bed. Bruce can’t even be sure how much of it he remembers. He didn’t seem to be affronted the morning after he’d bitten through his lip, but…

Bruce shakes his head. That had been different. Clark had been bleeding, then. He’d been hurt.

Bruce half-turns towards the door as he hears the sound of the bedclothes rustling, the barest creak of the mattress as Clark moves in his sleep.

For a moment, Bruce is trapped in indecision – he shouldn’t go to him. The feeling in his chest isn’t one he’s used to. Bruce has always known what he needs to protect, even if he’s failed in it. But Clark represents something different. Clark is a mistake that, through no virtue of his own, he’s able to correct. Bruce pulls in a breath, standing, before Diana’s words come back to him: _You’re not his keeper._

And she’s right, of course. Clark Kent is not his personal redemption project. He made mistakes, and he was prepared to live with them. He has done so his whole life. Clark coming back, whatever else it was, was not for his benefit.

Turning to look out of the window, the truth of that seems obvious. The winter morning’s grey light seeps between the buildings as Bruce watches, running a hand over his tired, aching eyes.

He should tell Clark what he’s learned – about the ship, about what he’s coming to believe it means. He should let Clark handle this himself. He’s capable of it. More so than Bruce.

Exhaling, Bruce turns and makes his way across the room to the suite’s second bathroom, shedding his clothes on the floor before turning the shower up far too hot and stepping inside. He aches from sitting up all night, and though he’s used to that, he’s also never denied himself a long, hot shower when he needs one.

And he wants to think.

The scalding hot water soothes his muscles as it pours over his shoulders – he still has a variety of miscellaneous aches and pains, collected over a lifetime of injuries. The coldness around his heart won’t dissipate, however, and nor will the shard of horror that has wormed its way into his chest as he thinks over the implications of the Kord Industries report.

He _needs_ to tell Clark. Clark may almost half-suspect it himself already. It’s possible that he may have some idea of what to do.  

But as he thinks this, the image of Clark as he was last night – senseless, disconnected, muttering inchoate syllables – enters his mind again, and he closes his eyes. Clark had seemed anything but in control of himself then, twisted in the sheets, his muscles straining against his skin. When he’d opened his eyes, they’d seemed almost luminous with need, pale blue even in the darkness of the room.

He had been burning hot under Bruce’s touch, and blindingly hard. He had looked at Bruce as he’d taken hold of him, his expression almost pleading.

Bruce swallows, then groans gently as he feels the tug of blood in his groin. This shouldn’t… he shouldn’t _feel_ this way. Guilt rises in his throat – he shouldn’t be getting turned on by this. Clark had been out of his mind; and really, there were a million reasons why it was wrong. But his dick apparently doesn’t care about any of them – it’s already hard against his thigh and getting harder, his balls throbbing. Bruce reaches out, pressing his hand against the shower wall so hard the tips of his fingers turn white, but he already knows it won’t do any good.

Clark’s voice is in his ears as he takes himself in his hand, groaning. _Please, Bruce. Please._

Bruce’s breath hitches, the squeeze of his hand almost too tight, almost painful. In his mind’s eye, he can see Clark writhing on the bed, coated in sweat, his lips dark against the pale white of his skin.

He almost doesn’t notice it as he comes, his chest feeling empty. The pleasure is fleeting, fruitless, and his nerves feel scraped raw at the end of it. Bruce doesn’t move – he stays where he is under the hot jet of the water, and he tries not to think anything at all.

 

*

 

Clark doesn’t mean to hear – he honestly doesn’t. But everything seems to fluctuate in and out, and almost never within his control. He doesn’t even _want_ to hear – he has never used his senses to intrude on other people’s private moments, when he can help it. It’s happened occasionally, but always by accident. That almost never makes it any less embarrassing, though.

He closes his eyes as he hears Bruce’s small groan as he finishes; he hears his long, slow breaths for a few moments afterwards, before he slathers his hands with shower gel, and scrubs them over his body. He doesn’t _want_ to hear any of this – not the angry way Bruce is breathing, now that he’s caught his breath; not the way he pulls a towel from the rack and rubs it roughly over his skin, as if he’s trying to scour it away.

Clark swallows, turning over on the bed. Despite not being able to rein in his hearing, he feels remarkably clear-headed this morning; enough to know that something is evidently bothering Bruce. Maybe it’s simple frustration at the situation. And while Clark knows Bruce has frustration enough for both of them, he knows him well enough by now to know that while he’s patient, he hates feeling stagnant. Powerless.

Gritting his teeth, Clark experimentally sits up on the bed. His head spins a moment, but settles quickly. He waits, but no nausea rises in his belly; he feels shaky, but steady enough to stand. He feels as though he has _slept_.

He doesn’t remember anything of the previous evening – it’s swathed entirely in a deep red haze, which descends over his memories, blotting them out. Clark feels something tug at his body, and something flashes in his mind – something that _wants_ to be remembered. Blinking, Clark turns to glance down at the bed, the way the sheets are tangled, pulled up from the mattress despite the severe hospital corners the staff tucked them into. There’s no evidence of a peaceful night’s sleep there at all – and, now that he thinks about it, he _does_ recall twisting in his sleep, the same unbearable heat between his legs… and he recalls a name on his lips, as he pleaded for something –

– Clark sits down heavily on the bed as memory comes flooding back. He had been dreaming, he remembers that now. Words press down on his head, but only one of them is distinct enough to recall. _The Codex._

The words stir a more distant memory within him, and he remembers standing on the Dark Zero with his father – with the shadow of his father – as he told him that… that the Codex is the key to all Kryptonian life. _That’s_ what the ship wants. _That’s_ what it’s seeking. The same thing as Zod, when he sought to destroy the Earth.

Blinking, Clark shakes his head, trying to clear it. He has to tell Bruce – he doesn't know quite how he’ll explain it, but Bruce will – Bruce can –

_Bruce._

Clark sucks in a quick breath, his eyes going wide as the name slides through his memory as if it’s slipping from his tongue, quiet and desperate and pleading. His heart thumps against his ribs suddenly as he recalls – he recalls waking in the night, feeling as if he was boiling alive. And Bruce, Bruce had –

Clark’s hands snap into fists. He tries desperately to sort through the jumble of his mind. Had that really happened, or had he just dreamed it? Clark honestly isn’t sure if he can tell. He dithers, caught between rising and sitting, and he knows he must look like the proverbial deer in the headlights when the bedroom door slides open and Bruce appears, holding a cup of coffee.

“Sleep well?”

Nothing in Bruce’s tone or demeanour gives anything away. Clark stares at him, and feels a hot flush creeping up his chest.

“I – yes. I think so.”

Bruce only nods. Clark feels as though his words are choking each other in his throat.

“We have some things to talk about,” Bruce says, after what he’s apparently judged to be a suitably awkward silence. “Do you feel up to it?”

Clark blinks. He supposes it’s better to get these things over and done with sooner rather than later. “Yes. I think so.”

Bruce just nods again, before turning away from the door and going back out to the living room. Clark stands as quickly as his spinning head will allow, finding the hotel robe on the floor and slipping it over his shoulders.

Bruce is sitting at the table, his laptop open in front of him, when Clark emerges. He doesn’t look up as he comes to sit next to him – not too close – his face impassive. Clark swallows. He wants to ask, but he’s honestly not sure if he knows how.

“Alfred’s decrypted most of the information from Kord Industries’ research,” Bruce says abruptly, without looking at him. “Most of it’s junk. But some of it…”

He pushes the laptop around so Clark can see it. His eyes flicker down the page, focusing with a little difficulty. Most of it is stuff he knows – things that Jor-El told him in the frozen wasteland he’d flown the ship to. The rest… the rest he’s guessed.

“It wants to… create something,” Clark says. “Like it created Doomsday.”

Bruce nods. “It used Zod last time. And now I think it’s looking for some other source.”

Clark shakes his head. These are things he barely got to understand before his command key, and Jor-El’s memories with it, were sucked back to the Phantom Zone with the pod he’d come to Earth in, the Dark Zero, and all of Zod’s followers. Everything that could have told him more about himself and the place he’d come from.

“I think… I don’t know, but I don’t think it works like that,” Clark says, but he realises even as he says it how completely unsure he is. “Zod… Zod told me that it needs the Codex to create life. That to… re-populate a new Krypton, he needed the Codex, the genetic template for all life on Krypton. Without it, it can’t –”

Bruce’s eyes are trained on him. “It created Doomsday.”

Clark can’t argue with that. “There’s… nothing to explain that in what you’ve read?”

“Not so far. But the ship is fighting them. It doesn’t want to give up what it knows, and how Luthor created that thing. It still thinks of Zod – or what Luthor made it believe was Zod – as its commander.”

There’s a cold, hard feeling in the pit of Clark’s stomach. “It still wants to create life. Luthor didn’t… he didn’t shut it off after he was pulled out of the ship.”

Bruce nods. “That’s what I think. I think it’s seeking the material it needs. Or wants.”

Neither of them have to say it. Clark glances up, and finds Bruce’s eyes on him again, hard and unreadable.

“Do you still believe it doesn’t want to harm you?”

“I don’t know,” Clark confesses. “I have no idea.”

Bruce looks away. “Either way,” he says, his voice steady. “Either way, it can’t… use me. It’s not looking for human DNA; it only wants you.”

Clark can see what Bruce is getting at, and he doesn’t like it. “You aren’t going there alone. We’ve already discussed this.”

In response, Bruce only turns to look at him again, giving him a dismissive once-over. “Even if the situation was different, what useful role do you really think you could play right now? Half the time you can barely stand up straight.”

Clark feels anger flare through him. “Don’t do this, Bruce. This isn’t… you _know_ that if anyone has any chance of interacting with the ship, it’s me. Not even Luthor could get it to do anything without Zod’s body. I’ve been in command of the ship before. There’s a chance it remembers me. It may let me –”

“And if it doesn’t?” Bruce cuts him off, eyes boring into him.

Clark swallows, licking his lips. “Then it will have what it wants,” he says. “It might… be more amenable – you could destroy –”

Bruce sits back, exhaling, and looks up at the ceiling. “Don’t do this, Clark,” he says. “Your self-sacrifice act is getting old.”

For a moment, Clark isn’t sure he’s heard right. He blinks. “What?”

“You heard me. That’s not a solution. So don’t suggest it again.”

Clark is caught for a moment, unsure how he’s supposed to be taking what Bruce is saying. Everything seems jumbled – Bruce’s apparent harshness now, what he heard this morning, and the only half-remembered things from last night that he’s not even sure really _happened…_

Bruce turns to him, looking him in the eye. “I’m getting sick of you dying, all right?”

Clark’s mouth snaps shut, whatever words he might have been going to say dying in his throat. He doesn’t know if Bruce meant him to hear it, but there’s a roughness to his voice, a slight hitch that probably would have been inaudible to anyone else. Bruce stands before he can sort out his thoughts, going to the kitchenette.

“Can you eat?”

Clark considers it briefly. “I can try.”

He doesn’t consider the discussion closed, but it’s clear that Bruce does. But his mother always did tell him he was too stubborn for his own good.

Standing on his wobbly legs, Clark follows Bruce to where he’s perusing the room service menu, doing a fair impersonation of nonchalance.

“Bruce,” Clark says, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “Whatever we do, we do it together.”

For a moment, Clark imagines he can see Bruce paging through all the possible responses he could make: _Who’s going to make me? – You’ll only get in my way – I have no use for a half-dead Superman._

In the end, he doesn’t say any of them. He doesn’t say anything at all.

 

*

 

Clark ends up curled on the couch before the afternoon is through. He should have known that whatever energy he’d had this morning couldn’t last; the call of the ship starts up again, low at first but building slowly, until it’s crowding everything else out of his mind. The walls of the hotel suite fizzle in and out of existence, and the harder he tries to look at them, the less substantial they seem. His stomach heaves, and the pancake he boldly ingested around lunchtime comes lurching back up his throat.

Clark groans, his head spinning. He can feel sweat prickling over his skin and he knows he’s panting, quickly and desperately. Strangely enough, though, he feels like he could fly, if he wanted to – that even feeling like he does now, he could leap out into the clearness of the sky, and find his way to –

There’s a cool hand on his forehead before he can finish the thought. Something damp and cold spreads itself across his throat, and he opens his eyes to find Bruce looking down at him, a glass of ice water in one hand, a towel in the other.

“Calm down,” he says, voice soft. As if he knows anything louder would hurt Clark’s eardrums. “You’re fine. You’re here.”

Clark groans again, feeling sick. The sting of bile is still in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he manages to get out, when Bruce reapplies the cold towel to his forehead.

“You keep apologising. Don’t.”

Clark draws in a shaky breath. He never did get up the courage to ask Bruce about what had happened last night – and Bruce had volunteered nothing. He’s honestly not sure which one unnerves him the most: that Bruce might have felt like that was something he _had_ to do, or whether that was the image his own brain had supplied him.

“I don’t imagine that… this can be fun for you,” Clark says, twitching. “And you shouldn’t feel obligated.”

“Obligated?” Bruce’s voice sounds hollow when he says it.

“Because of what happened. The fight. The kryptonite.” Clark’s said it now – the topic they’ve been skirting for weeks is out in the open, and hovering in the air between them.

Bruce’s face doesn’t change. “I tried to kill you.”

“You could have,” Clark says, hearing the rasp in his own voice. “It would have been… you could have. But you chose not to. You changed your mind. You saved my mother.”

There’s nothing in Bruce’s face to say he’s even heard what Clark said – his hands don’t stop dipping the towel into the ice water. His expression doesn’t so much as flicker.

“When you came to find me at my apartment,” Clark says after a pause, having to concentrate hard to find the words. “I was… hiding. I didn’t know what to do, or what was happening to me. And you – you came to – ”

They lapse into silence. Clark needs to get his strength back after the conversation – and he can already feel that deep throb in his blood, and he knows what's coming.

“Bruce, I think I – I should –”

“I ran a bath,” Bruce says, cutting him off. “A cold one.”

Clark blinks up at him. “Oh.” A thought occurs to him. “Shouldn’t you feed a fever?”

The faintest of smiles flickers across Bruce’s face. “Ordinarily, yes. But you’re not fighting an infection. You’re burning up, though – I want to get your temperature down. It might help.”

Bruce lifts his arm, slinging it over his shoulder and helping him to stand. Clark has no choice but to lean heavily against him, feeling too weak to stand on his own. Bruce’s grip around his wrist and on his waist is strong and sure as he guides him across the room, his fingers pressing into Clark’s skin. Clark’s head swims, as he tries to clamp down on his body’s response. He’s already embarrassed himself enough in front of Bruce – he’s so weak, so helpless. He doesn’t need to do this as well. At least, not more than he has done already.

The shock of the cold water against his skin is almost more than Clark can handle – he gasps as it washes over him, enclosing him in what feels like a million shards of ice, all poking at his skin. A shiver passes through him, and he almost cries out. But after the initial shock, the movement of the water becomes soothing against his skin, the abrasive cold lowering his fever. Clark closes his eyes and sinks down into it, sitting so that his nostrils remain hovering above the waterline, his chin and lips submerged.

“I don’t know if this will do any good," Bruce says, "but it can’t hurt, can it?”

Clark doesn’t answer him. Right now, the cold feels as good as the warm rays of the yellow sun, and he absorbs it just as greedily.

When he blinks his eyes open again, Bruce is leaning against the doorframe, watching him. Clark still has on the plush robe, through it’s obviously soaked through now. He should take it off, but he doesn’t move.

Rising a little, Clark says, “Will you come sit with me?”

Bruce is silent for a moment, but then he exhales – as if this, out of everything that has happened over the past week or so, is the thing that’s an imposition – and moves away from the door, coming to sit on the stool in front of the mirror.

Clark watches him, and sees the way Bruce carefully doesn’t look at him; the way he keeps his eyes to himself. Clark doesn’t want to embarrass him, but he’s suddenly consumed with the _need_ to know what happened last night: what he might have said or done, why it is that he can’t shake the feeling of Bruce’s hands on him, and the twisting, coiling pleasure that had snaked through his veins. The only thing aside from pain that he’s felt since he came back.

“Bruce, did… did something happen last night?”

Bruce’s shoulders rise as he breathes in. “Yes.”

“Did I… did I ask you to –”

Bruce’s eyes snap to his, and Clark knows he doesn’t have to continue.

“You didn’t ask. Not in the way you mean. But I thought you needed it.”

Bruce’s tone is matter-of-fact. As if that’s all there is to it – it was something that Clark needed, so he’d given it to him. For the sake of his health.

Clark isn’t sure why he feels a slice of disappointment arc through his chest.

 

*

 

Bruce watches as Clark drifts in and out of a slow, lazy doze, the side of his face resting against the porcelain rim of the bath. He looks more peaceful than Bruce has seen him look in days – at least, for a while. Bruce’s head feels empty, as if he’s been drained of any capacity or desire for thought.

And he feels like he’s drowning. Not just in everything he doesn’t understand about the ship and what it wants to do with Clark, but also in everything about himself. About what _he_ wants. And about what Clark wants.

_You came to me._

It had been the smallest of gestures. But Bruce supposes that this is part of Clark’s life. The people who love him love him fiercely, but how many do they number? How many people know who he is – who he _really_ is? His mother. Lois. Diana, who knows his secret, but whom he has barely met. And Bruce.

The world might love Superman, but their love relies on them not knowing his frailties; never seeing his weaknesses. Bruce stares at Clark’s face, wondering how anyone else might react if they could see him as he is now.

Bruce sits by him for a long time – Clark seems relatively peaceful for some time, but then the shivering is back, the flush of his skin, and the drawing of his barely-healed lip back between his teeth.

“Clark.” Bruce reaches out, running his thumb over the arch of Clark’s cheekbone. He draws his hand away quickly as Clark’s eyes flicker open, his brows drawing together. “I’ll help you out of the bath,” Bruce says, as Clark struggles to focus.

He should really have gotten Clark to take the robe off before he got in, Bruce reflects as the whole sodden mass of it comes up with him as Bruce helps him up. Bruce shoves it off his shoulders and lets it slap back down into the water, sending a wave over the edge to splash onto the marble floor. Bruce puts an arm around Clark and helps him to the bedroom, his sweaty cheek pressed to his throat.

Clark lies back on the bed and closes his eyes, his breathing shallow and irregular. Bruce watches him for a moment, then begins to turn away, heading for the door.

“Bruce.”

Clark’s voice stops him cold.

“I can… I can feel it.” Clark’s voice sounds thready and weak. “I don’t know if I can…” He trails off.

“You don’t know if you can what?” Bruce is back by the bed in a heartbeat. Clark cracks his eyes open, looking at him, though he doesn’t answer the question.

“Will you stay with me?” Clark swallows. “I hate the dreams I have when I’m like this. It’s like… it’s like when Zod was showing me what he wanted to do to Earth. It’s like there’s someone else in my mind. Controlling it.”

Bruce presses his lips together. “I’ll stay with you.”

Clark’s eyes move over his face for a moment as if he’s searching for something, but then they slide shut once more.

“Thank you,” is all he says.

 

*

 

Bruce wakes from his doze the next morning sitting in one of the armchairs by the bed. Stretching, Bruce feels at least a dozen cracks run down the full length of his spine. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, and he’s irritated with himself for letting it happen. When he turns to look at Clark, he finds his eyes open, looking at him.

“How long have you been awake?” Bruce asks him, feeling ruffled that he had been so dead to the world that he didn’t feel Clark’s eyes on him, even as he slept.

“Not long.” Clark’s voice sounds raspy. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You wouldn’t have.” He rolls his shoulders, his stiff muscles protesting. Bruce winces a little as his neck twinges. Yet another reminder that age is catching up with him – that every fall, every injury, every blow will extract its price eventually.

Clark doesn’t answer him, his eyes closed. As Bruce watches him, he sees one long shiver pass through the length of his body, before he licks his lips, swallowing.

“I didn’t think you’d really stay,” Clark says after a moment.

Bruce blinks, frowning. It doesn’t seem like something that should matter to Clark – whether he’s here or not. Possibly he’s feeling fragile right now, but Clark isn’t a child.

Clark draws in a long, deep breath. “Perhaps… perhaps this has been good for me,” he says, his voice sounding somewhat slurred. “It would have been easy… it would have been easy to stay in Kansas. Not to come back. It would have been… safe. I could have hidden there, for as long as I wanted to. Nobody was looking for me. I was dead. It would have been easy. But…”

Bruce isn’t sure if Clark means to be saying these things out loud, but then Clark’s eyes open, and he looks up into Bruce’s face.

“Maybe being forced to come back… maybe that was good,” he says, and though he sounds drowsy as he says it, his eyes are clear.

Bruce’s mouth goes dry, and he can feel his heart beating against his ribs, keeping time like a metronome.

“You would have come back,” Bruce says, not really having planned to speak before he says it.

Clark looks up at him. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“I don’t.”

Clark apparently doesn’t have an answer to that. Bruce clears his throat, trying to break the heavy tension in the air.

“Do you want to get up?”

Clark looks drowsy, but he nods his head. “Yes.” A pause. “Will you… I mean, can you –”

Bruce doesn’t answer him – he just leans down, slipping his arm around Clark’s shoulder, helping him to stand. Clark’s cheek falls against his throat, his skin burning hot, the flicker of his eyelashes moving against his neck.

Bruce swallows heavily – Clark is wearing nothing but his cotton boxer shorts, his skin warm and sticky with sweat. Bruce can feel his chest expand every time he breathes; the shift of his muscles beneath his skin as he starts to stand under his own power. Bruce closes his eyes. He can already feel arousal throbbing to life in his stomach, no matter how little he wants to feel it. He already knows how useless it is; how futile. What had happened the other night would never – and _should_ never – be allowed to repeat itself. If not for Clark’s sake, then his own.

Clark moves away from him slightly as he finds his feet, and there is a cool rush of air between them. Clark’s eyes are bright even in the half-light of the room, darkened by the heavy blackout curtains. Bruce watches as Clark blinks, slowly, his eyes dropping, and then hears him sigh, almost as if his breath has caught in his throat.

“Clark –” Bruce starts to say, but before he can say anything more, Clark’s hands are cupping his face, the pads of his thumbs tracing his lips before he leans forward and kisses him.

Bruce knows he should pull away – he knows that he should jerk his head back, push Clark away from him, and tell him that he’s not in his right mind just now. It would all be true: can he really tell himself that Clark would be doing this if it weren’t for everything that’s happening with him now, and the effect that the scout ship is having on him? Clark’s tongue sweeps against his lips, and the knot of desire in his stomach winds tighter, but he forces himself to pull back, putting his hands on Clark’s shoulders.

“Clark,” he says again, and he knows that his voice sounds husky. He wants to say more, but nothing will come to him. He should say something cruel – dredge some horrible words out of his impressive arsenal to convince Clark that this is a mistake. But Clark leans forward again, desperate and warm, his lips parted.

“Please, Bruce. I can’t… I _want –_ ”

Bruce groans at the slight shake in Clark’s voice, and he knows that, whatever else he’s been able to deny himself over the years, he has no way to defend himself from this. Not when Clark is kissing him like this, long and deep and slow, his lips parted and his tongue soft against his; and not when he’s pressing the full length of his body against him, fingers digging into Bruce’s sides. He wants to tell Clark to stop, but he’s only flesh and blood, after all. No matter how differently he’d like to believe. No matter how many years he’s spent trying to carve himself into stone.

Clark is warmer than he should be – warmer than _anyone_ should be. His fingers twist in Bruce’s shirt; and then his knees must hit the back of the bed because he folds backwards onto it, bringing Bruce down on top of him.

The jolt separates their lips momentarily, but then Clark is straining up again, his fists still rolled in Bruce’s clothes, craning back his neck back to catch Bruce’s lips with this own. And Bruce… Bruce lets him. He does _more_ than let him – he opens his mouth to Clark’s, feeling the hot slide of his tongue, and wanting it. He wants this so badly he’s not sure he can even put it into words.

Bruce lets himself forget – he puts everything else out of his mind and concentrates on the feeling of Clark’s cock, hard against his stomach, and tasting his sweat on his lips. Clark lets out a raw, hungry groan, before his hands go to the front of Bruce’s shirt, fumbling with the buttons.

“Stop,” Bruce says, pulling back a little, and a flash of uncertainty enters Clark’s eyes as he looks up at him. But it’s gone in the next minute as Bruce pulls his shirt open, sending the buttons scattering across the room, and tosses it aside. Bruce groans, kissing him again, swallowing Clark’s panting breath as he struggles with the zip of Bruce’s pants. He stands between Clark’s thighs, leaning over him on the bed, and he groans as Clark lifts his legs, wrapping them around him, squeezing his hips between them.

Bruce is already rock hard; he can feel the dull, heavy thud of his pulse in his cock, pushing against the material of his pants. Clark’s hand brushes against it and he swallows, feeling a bright flare of heat along his veins. _God._

Bruce puts his palm down on the bed, levering himself away to look down at Clark. His eyes are closed, lower lip drawn back between his teeth. He arches his back up, pressing himself up against Bruce’s groin, the hard length of his cock pushing up against him.

“Bruce.” His voice is little more than a whisper at the back of his throat, low and broken-sounding, as if every moment that Bruce isn’t fucking him is a moment too long. Bruce swallows, his throat feeling thick. There’s a low sense of unease building in his chest, but it’s swept away when Clark slides his hand into his briefs, curling his fingers around him. Bruce throws his head back and lets the pleasure wash over him, heating his blood and sending fire down his nerves.

“God, Clark,” Bruce says, the words slipping out from between his gritted teeth. He can feel the tremble in Clark’s hand as it moves over him, stroking him, until whatever remains of Bruce’s self-control frays, snapping in two.

His cock already feels slick as he leans back, standing over Clark. Clark is looking up at him, cheeks flushed, his muscles taut beneath his skin. The sweep of his ribs rises and falls as he breathes, and Bruce has to close his eyes, the sight too much for him. He had seen Clark die – seen him lying in the rubble with a hole in his chest – but he’s here with him now, breathing and warm and _alive._

He bends down, running his lips over Clark’s sternum, feeling the hair of his chest brush against his lips, savouring the taste of his sweat – and below that, the warm, soft flavour of his skin. Clark moans, moving beneath him on the bed, his eyes sliding shut when Bruce’s hand finds his cock. It pulses hotly against his palm, and Clark makes small, strangled noises as he strokes him. He could probably make Clark come just from this; simply from touching him – but even as the thought enters Bruce’s head, Clark is suddenly arching up beneath him, eyes squeezed shut, as come spills over his hand, warm and sticky.

Bruce keeps going, keeps his fingers curled around him until Clark is fully spent, hips jerking, his body shuddering with the aftershocks. He’s still hard even after he’s stopped coming, his cock still pulsing in Bruce’s hand, and showing no signs of softening. Clark’s head is turned to the side, his cheeks flushed, eyebrows drawn together, his lips parted.

“Jesus, Clark.” The words slip from his lips without his conscious will. Clark looks… he doesn’t have the words for how Clark looks.

Clark doesn’t seem to hear him at first, but then he cracks an eye open, turning his head to look up at him. A smile twitches at the corners of his lips, and he shifts a little on the bed – just enough so that Bruce is made very much aware that despite the fact he just came, his dick is still hard between them. Bruce swallows as it brushes against his, sending pleasure spiralling through him.

“You still need to come.” Clark’s voice is quiet in the stillness that follows, and Bruce swallows, his breath catching in his throat.

“I don’t.” And he doesn’t – at least, not here. Not with Clark – he can go and finish himself in the shower, as he has in the past, when he hasn’t even been able to keep up enough of a pretence to bring someone home with him – on the nights when he’s been too exhausted even for those hollow, impersonal encounters.

Clark licks his lips, as if he’s trying to gauge what Bruce means; like he’s a puzzle Clark needs to solve.

“What if I want you to?”

For a moment, Bruce isn’t sure he’s heard correctly – but then Clark reaches between them, circling his dick with his fingers and sliding them up along his length, soft and slow, until Bruce can do nothing but throw his head back, hips jerking, seeking the warmth of Clark’s hand.

When he leans down to kiss him again, Clark opens his mouth, tongue sliding between Bruce’s lips easily. He shifts beneath him, pushing himself up against Bruce, their cocks pressed together.

Bruce groans, gritting his teeth. “Have you – ” he starts to ask, but before he can finish the question, Clark nods.

“Once or twice. A long time ago.”

Bruce wants to make a mental note to ask Clark about that at some stage, but for now, the only thing he can think about is the warm press of Clark’s skin against his, the way Clark’s fingers are stroking over the base of his spine, catching the root of every nerve, and making his blood throb in his veins.

Clark parts his thighs around him when he stands up, his hand on the back of Clark’s knee, opening his body to him. His cock is slick with the come that Clark spilled earlier – and there’s more of it than Bruce can ever recall seeing before in his life – and he moves forward, sliding against Clark’s body, watching as he writhes up, seeking more contact, desperate for whatever Bruce will give him.

Bruce simply doesn’t have the will to go on teasing him for long, however – his nerves already feel frayed to the point of breaking, his pulse feeling ragged and raw. He closes his eyes, shifting his hips, and begins to sink forward.

_Fuck. **Fuck.**_

Bruce doesn’t even try to hold back the groan that leaves his throat as he pushes into Clark’s body. Bruce is hardly inexperienced, and he’d thought there wasn’t a great deal that life had to offer that he hadn’t already sampled. But _this_ …

The tight heat of Clark’s body holds him like a glove, clenching around him as he sinks slowly into him. For a moment, Bruce doesn’t move, feeling the grip of Clark’s body around him: a white-hot heat that seems to flutter against him, the rhythmic throb of Clark’s pulse that seems to squeeze his cock as if trying to drain the life out of him. Bruce grits his teeth as Clark shifts beneath him, his thighs clenching around Bruce’s hips, as if trying to spur him to movement.

Bruce can feel his arms shaking as he props himself up on the bed, buried in Clark but not yet able to bring himself to movement. He feels lost here – drowning in the slip of Clark’s skin against his, the grip of his body, the small, desperate sounds he makes as he once again raises his hips, pressing himself against Bruce and drawing him closer. He wants to move – wants to draw back and hold Clark’s hips and drive into him, to hear the slap of their skin... but he cannot bring himself to lose this, the sight of Clark beneath him, eyes closed, his lower lip drawn back between his teeth, his pulse hammering in throat, a deep flush colouring his cheeks. Curls of sweaty hair lick over his forehead, a crescent of shadow between his dark furrowed eyebrows. He is beautiful – there is no other word for it. Of course, Bruce has always known that – you’d have to be blind not to notice it – but here, now, like this, Bruce feels as if he could stare down at him forever, lost in him, and not even sure he cares.

“Bruce, please.” Clark’s voice is soft, but it sends a spark down the full network of his veins, like a flame travelling down a fuse. He swallows as Clark rolls his hips, jerking up off the tangled sheets, his flushed cock pressed tight against his stomach, leaving strings of pre-come on his skin. Bruce cannot ignore the plea in his voice.

Bruce moves slowly at first, trying to draw this out – he has never, _never_ felt anything like this before. The sound that rises in Clark’s throat when Bruce makes his first hard thrust is almost a sob, and his hips rise to meet his every move, as if he wants more, wants to draw Bruce in deeper even when he is as far in as he can go. Clark squirms upwards, his back arching, and Bruce reaches forward to grasp his still-hard cock, moving his hand over it in time with his thrusts. Clark cries out, the clench of his muscles around him seeming to wash over Bruce’s whole body, sending white heat licking over his nerves.

“Clark. _Clark_.” Bruce can hear himself repeating his name, again and again, almost like a mantra – but he’s powerless to stop himself, any more than he can hold back now. His misgivings are gone – everything is wiped from his head but this, the feeling of Clark’s fingers digging into his arms, Clark’s breath against his throat, and the small sounds he makes every time Bruce sinks into his body.

He bows his head, finding Clark’s lips with his own, their mouths meeting with a kind of messy, desperate hunger that can only feed itself. Bruce sucks Clark’s tongue into his mouth, his hand going to his head to tangle in his hair and hold him where he is. There’s a slight _click_ as their teeth slide against each other when Clark pulls back, panting into Bruce’s mouth, his breath hot against his face.

Clark lets out a strangled moan, his muscles twitching around him as he jerks up off the bed, his back in a tight arch as Bruce reaches between them, curling his fingers around his slick, desperately hard cock. The movement of his hips drives it up through his ring of his fingers, and he squeezes, tightening his grip, and hears Clark’s answering cry. Clark raises his hand, fingers curling through the short hair on the back of Bruce’s neck, short nails pressing into his skin every time he thrust forward.

Bruce has to close his eyes – he does not want to see the way Clark twists beneath him on the bed; the way his mouth parts in a soundless cry, lips drawn back from his teeth as if he is in pain. Clark’s movements begin to feel frantic, his fingers scrabbling against the muscle of Bruce’s back, sliding over skin and scar tissue as if trying desperately to find something to anchor himself to. Bruce gasps as the tight clutch of Clark’s body around him seems to wind even tighter, as if trying to draw him in even deeper even time he pushed forwards into him. Bruce can feel the dark, gathering tension at the base of his spine, and he knows that he will not last much longer.

Clark’s sudden cry shakes Bruce down to his bones, arching up, nails burying themselves in Bruce’s back. He comes thickly over Bruce’s hand, coating his stomach and chest, his cock pulsing hotly in Bruce’s grip.

Panting, his body still wracked with the last traces of his orgasm, Clark falls back, his head turned to the side. Bruce groans, gripping his hips and pushing into him, his hand still covered with Clark’s come, and feels his muscles cording beneath his skin, so tight he feels as if he will snap in two. Seemingly barely conscious, Clark squeezes his inner muscles around him once more, and Bruce throws his head back, voice hoarse, feeling the dark pull of everything in his body bending towards one point. His orgasm tears through him, leaving nothing behind it, and, for a moment at least, emptying him of thought, of feeling, of everything except the sensation of engulfing pleasure and heat.

When Bruce comes back to himself, he is lying with his head pressed against Clark’s throat, his breath still heavy in his chest, sweat coating his body. Clark is quiet beneath him, his breath deep and even, one hand resting gently on Bruce’s back. Bruce stays where he is for a long moment, watching his breath move the small hairs on the top of Clark’s chest, before he slowly rolls away, settling on the bed next to him. Clark makes a small, sleepy noise, and then his hand creeps across Bruce’s stomach, fingertips tracing lightly over his skin.

Bruce stares up at the ceiling, on the verge of standing – but then, Clark sighs in his sleep, warm breath puffing against his shoulder, and he stays where he is, closing his eyes.

 

 

*

 

When Clark wakes up, his eyes unfocused, he asks Bruce to talk to him – to tell him something he doesn’t know. Bruce has no idea what to say to him, until Clark asks him if he had a pet when he was growing up, and Bruce tells him he had a hamster, once, but it had died, and Alfred had replaced it with another, thinking he wouldn’t notice.

“But of course, you did,” Clark says, eyes solemn, as if the death of a hamster is something he takes very seriously.

Bruce shrugs. “I didn’t tell Alfred, though. I still don’t think he knows. It would break his little heart.”

 

*

 

They have sex again later in the evening, after Bruce has had coffee and ordered room service and taken a shower; it’s slower, this time, almost languorous, and when it’s over Clark lies back as if senseless, his breathing deep and almost peaceful.

Bruce feels something inside him unravel when he pulls away and gets up, running a hand through his hair. He needs to check his email, though, and find out what else Alfred has managed to discover about the scout ship.

“Bruce?” Clark asks, sitting up on the bed, running a hand through his hair.

“Sleep,” Bruce tells him as he opens the door to go out to the living room, not turning back to look at him.  

 

*

 

Bruce snaps awake, heart thumping, at the sound of his phone ringing on the table next to his ear. He stares down at it in non-comprehension for a few seconds, before collecting himself enough to grab it.

“Master Wayne.” Alfred’s voice is tense on the other end. “Are you looking at the television?”

Bruce rakes a hand through his hair, standing and searching for the remote. “No,” he says, after finding it in a box on the coffee table. “What should I be looking at? What channel?”

“ _All_ of them.”

Alfred is right. It’s obvious what he’s talking about the second Bruce switches on the TV. A tense-faced reporter, the first stages of panic visible in her eyes, is standing in front of –

 _Oh, Christ,_ Bruce thinks.

– she’s standing in front of the scout ship crash site, a jittery stream of words Bruce isn’t listening to leaving her lips. He’s staring at the image over her shoulder: of collapsed scaffolds and military personnel charging this way and that, of flashing lights and sirens, and the gaping hole in the landscape where the scout ship had once sat.

It’s gone.

“—as yet haven’t released any statement, and are refusing to provide any explanation. The only thing that is clear is that the extra-terrestrial ship that has lain here since crashing almost three years ago has disappeared, having lifted off and flown –”

For the first time, Bruce focuses on what the reporter is actually saying.

“—speculation that the military itself has gained control of the ship and removed it from the city, but the chaos I’m seeing here would seem to put paid to that theory, which leaves us to ask –”

Bruce changes the channel, but it’s the same everywhere. No one knows what’s happening. Belatedly, he remembers Alfred is still on the line, and he raises the phone to his ear.

“Alfred, when the hell did this happen?”

“Roughly fifteen minutes ago.” A brief pause. “Mr. Kent hasn’t said anything?”

_Christ. Clark._

Bruce lets the hand holding the phone drop to his side, swinging to face the door of the bedroom. But before he can move, the door slides open, and Clark stands in the doorway, his expression wild, sweat coating his face and chest.

“Clark –” Bruce starts to say, but Clark doesn't hear him, apparently. His eyes move rapidly, lips parted as he heaves in shaky breaths. Bruce has the uncanny idea that he looks like a wounded bull, stuck with spears and bleeding, searching for the author of his torment.

Pushing the thought aside, Bruce reaches out for him, just in time for Clark to rush past him. He doesn’t knock him aside, but he comes close enough that Bruce can feel how scalding hot his skin is, and hear the rasp of his breath in his throat.

“ _Clark_ ,” he says again, but it’s too late – Clark is too fast, moving too quickly for Bruce’s eyes to follow, as he breaks through the balcony window, sending shards of glass scattering across the carpet of the living room and the tiles outside. The curtains billow into the room as Clark takes off, becoming nothing more than a blur; somewhere distant, Bruce hears the sound of a sonic boom.

For a moment, Bruce simply stares after him, his heart hammering in his ears. Then he lifts the phone to his ear. Again.

“Alfred, I’m going to need the plane.”

 

*

 

Clark can feel the wind tear at his skin as he flies. Pain sears through him, fringing his vision with white, but still he keeps on. He doesn’t even remember leaving the penthouse suite – he recalls the sudden horrific tearing sensation that had coursed through him, as if someone had taken every vein, every nerve in his body and _pulled_. He recalls Bruce, the horrified expression on his face, and the way he had said _Clark_. But beyond that, everything is blank.

He feels all at once too aware and unaware of his body; he can feel the pain, the coursing of sweat and blood over his skin, the cramping of his muscles; but at the same time, a numbness has come over him, as if everything has compressed into a single dark point that is receding before his eyes.

The only thing he knows is that he has to reach it.

When Clark finally falls to earth, he has no idea where he is. Bile bubbles up his throat, bitter and sickly, and the whiteness is blotted out by darkness as he falls forward, barely catching himself short of landing face-first onto the ground. His arms quiver with the effort of supporting his weight.

For a long moment, he simply stays where he is on his hands and knees, his chest heaving. His throat feels raw and his muscles twitch with exhaustion, his body aching. The only thing he wants to do is collapse onto the ground right where he is and never move another inch for as long as he lives, but he knows he can’t – he can still feel that irresistible pull inside him, every cell in his body screaming that he can’t stay here. He _has_ to get up – he _has_ to follow it.

Standing shakily, Clark looks around him. He’s not sure where he is, but it’s somewhere thickly wooded – snow lies heavily on the ground, coating the dark green boughs of the trees, and he sinks into it up to his ankles as he rises. In the distance, he can see the peaks of mountains rising above the forest, but there’s no landmarks, no sign of any civilisation whatsoever.

Feeling another vicious _tug_ on his body, Clark stumbles forward, his feet dragging in the snow, moving without knowing where he’s going. Somehow, his feet know where to tread, his breath streaming out behind him in a white cloud as he goes.

He knows instinctively which direction to go – when he finds the ship, it’s resting in a clearing, the snow around it melted to reveal the dark earth underneath. Clark hesitates, pausing by the trunk of a massive fir. The ship seems to be almost quivering with energy, shivering with something that he might have described as life. He knows, because it’s exactly the same as he feels – as if his cells are vibrating against each other, desperate to escape his body. Fear rises like bile in his throat. He doesn’t want to go forward, but he knows he has no choice. If he tries to turn back now, he feels he’ll be ripped to shreds by his own protesting sinew.

Clark feels the bark of the tree he’s leaning against splinter beneath his fingers. It won’t help, trying to hang onto it like this, as if he’s trying to anchor himself in place.

 _Bruce._ The name floats to the forefront of his mind, in the small part of it that he still feels is his own. With the particle of will he can still control, he scratches against the wood of the tree with his finger, driving it into the trunk. _Bruce. Find me._

Clark takes a step forward, drawn inexorably towards the ship. The door opens as he approaches and he sets foot on the ramp leading into its belly.

 

*

 

Bruce has enough fuel to keep flying for the moment – but if he wants to land and take off again, it won’t be anywhere near enough. He’ll be crossing the border soon, too, which raises its own set of problems; and there’s still no sign of either Clark or the scout ship.

And Alfred’s voice is in his ear again, pointing out all the ways in which this is an absolutely terrible idea.

“What is it exactly you plan to do, once you find Mr. Kent?”

Bruce grits his teeth. “I don’t _know_ , Alfred.”

There’s silence on the comms, but Bruce can read a whole _world_ of judgement into that.

And what’s worse, he _knows_ Alfred is right. Bruce has never in his life gone into a situation as blindly as he’s going into this one – at least, not when he could help it. Doomsday had, perhaps, been the one exception, and that had hardly been something he could help. Ordinarily, he is exacting in his plans. There’s nothing he’ll leave to chance, and he’ll spend months grinding down the odds to be in his favour.

Now, he has nothing.

He only has the knowledge he garnered from Kord Industries’ reports, and his own tenuous understanding of what the ship is trying to do to Clark.

In another situation, he might be able to say he has Clark, but now, he’s not even sure if he has that.

Again, he recalls the look on Clark’s face before he crashed onto the balcony and took off into the sky – it was vacant, feverish. There was nothing to say he was in control of his own body. That he even knew who Bruce was when he said his name.

“You’re past the point of no return now in terms of having enough fuel to take off, should you need to land,” Alfred helpfully points out.

Bruce pulls in a deep breath. “Once I’ve found him, I’ll get out. You fly the plane back in drone mode and refuel. Fly it back to pick us up, after…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, because he has no idea after what, exactly, Alfred will return the plane.

Alfred doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t matter – the looming shape of the scout ship suddenly comes into range on his radar, and the entirety of Bruce’s focus shifts to it, and what he has to do.

Bruce decreases speed and altitude, dropping so he’s skimming just over the tops of the tall, snow-coated Douglas firs beneath him. He switches to infrared – the snow is deep blue cold, and the ship stands out like a blood-coloured stain.

And Clark… there’s no sign of Clark.

Bruce swings the plane around, surveying the site where the ship has landed. It’s not moving – there’s no sign of life whatsoever. Except that – except that now that he’s swung around the far side, Bruce can see that the wide door at the back, the one that had confounded first the military scientists and then LexCorp is wide open in the snow, gaping like a toothless maw.

“I’m going to drop into the clearing and get out,” Bruce mutters. “You take the plane home. I’ll contact you when… I’ll contact you.”

“Understood, sir.” Alfred’s voice is clipped, but Bruce hopes he understands the necessity of what he’s doing. He _cannot_ leave Clark alone in this, and it has nothing to do with making up for the sins of the past, or asking Clark to forgive him.

Bruce unstraps himself from his seat, and pops the hatch. He hears the soft _ping_ that indicates the plane has switched to drone mode, and Alfred slowly lowers him to jumping distance of the ground.

The plane turns almost as soon as Bruce’s feet leave it – Alfred has no choice but to get it back immediately, if he’s not going to be cutting it far too fine with fuel. It’s already invisible by the time he’s sunk up to his ankles in the snow, crushing it down beneath his feet.

Bruce wraps his cape around him as the chill of the wind cuts through the suit, down to his skin. The ship isn’t moving – and there’s nothing to show it has any weapons, any external defences of any kind. But Bruce knows better than to be fooled by that: he’s seen the kind of destruction Kryptonian tech is capable of. Kord’s report had indicated only 50% operating efficiency, but Bruce has no idea what that 50% accounts for – whether that’s entirely taken up with flight, self-repair, and… its plans for Clark, or whether it’s been able to bring its weapons systems online.

He watches it, painfully aware that every passing moment is a moment longer that Clark might be waiting. If he’s even here. If he hasn’t managed to shake off whatever hold the ship has over him, and flown back to the Plaza. Or – Bruce swallows – if he’s lost control of his powers again, and –

 _Stop_ , Bruce commands himself. Wild speculation has never been helpful.

Bruce moves around the ship, slowly, warily, but it remains silent. It’s not until he comes to the treeline that he sees something that makes him pause: footprints. Embedded in the snow, leading straight into the ship.

Maybe it’s some curious hiker, but Bruce doubts it. Glancing to his left, he hisses in a quick breath. Someone has dug their fingers deep into the trunk of the closest tree here – its black bark is splintered and broken, but even the wood beneath it is dented and driven inwards, forming deep grooves. No human has the strength to do such damage.

Bruce swallows, but it’s only when he looks closer that he sees more – he sees what he is _supposed_ to see. The bark isn’t just cracked and broken. There’s something deliberately carved into it. It’s the letter _B._

_Clark._

It’s all Bruce can do not to break into a run, but he forces himself to hold back. Looking down, he sees a fair-sized rock, partially covered by snow, but easily uncovered. Digging it up, Bruce takes it in his fist, and then hurls it as hard as he can at the side of the ship.

No laser beans emerge to blast the rock into powder; no shields raise to protect it. The only thing that happens is the rock hits the ship with a dull metallic _clang_ , bouncing off and falling into the snow once more.

It’s hardly a foolproof test. But it’s the only one he has.

He could probably rig something up, if he had time. But that’s exactly what he doesn’t have.

Gritting his teeth, Bruce steps out into the clearing, heading towards the ship.

 

*

 

It’s warm inside the ship. Clark knows, obviously, that electronics generate heat as they run, but this is different. There’s something almost… _organic_ about this heat. As if it comes from a living, breathing body, rather than anything so sterile as technology. But then, this has always been the way of the Kryptonian tech he has seen – it looks biological, all curves and soft, rounded edges. Changeable. Malleable. The sections of the pathway he’s standing on interlock like vertebrae, the wall supports arching over his head like ribs.

Clark makes his way through the vessel, feeling it close tightly around him as he goes. It looks far different from the time he was here with his father’s projected image: sections of the walls gape like wounds, while others are covered in silvery scars, where the ship has repaired itself. But more than that is the persistent _throb_ he hears in his ears, as if the ship is sucking energy through itself one heartbeat at a time. The sound draws him along, pulling him inexorably forward.

The door leading to the Genesis Chamber is missing; the gantry is still torn down, scraps of metal twisting up where it used to be. Clark swallows as he approaches – his head feels like it’s filled with cotton, his blood roaring in his ears, every cell in his body pushing him forwards. Clark balls his fists, but he already knows there’s nothing he can do. The steps he takes aren’t his own – his _body_ isn’t his own. The ship has taken it. The only thing he can do is obey.

The Genesis Chamber itself is awash with amniotic fluid – scraps of the ship and something clear and gelatinous float on its surface, and out of the corner of his eye Clark _swears_ he sees something move. He wades in deeper, feeling the thick fluid pool around his thighs, sucking at them, clinging to his flesh, just as it had done in his dream. Warm yellow light emanates from beneath the surface as he moves, feeling the fluid swirl around his waist. It soothes him – the fire that had been prickling along his skin is doused, and the deep, aching throb in his blood subsides at least a little. Clark’s breath still shakes as it leaves his lips, and fear curdles in his belly. The liquid swells around him, sucking on his skin, and Clark looks around wildly as electronic jitter rises in his ears, before resolving itself into a female voice.

“Genesis Chamber ready to analyse genetic sample. Acknowledging presence of genetic material. Host unidentified, but DNA indicates a member of the House of El.”

Clark stands stock still as the fluid roils around him slightly, shifting.

“Correction. Host identified…” The ship’s voice jitters a little again, as if lagging. “No host present. Genetic material identified as Kryptonian Registry of Citizens, the Growth Codex.”

 _The Codex._ The word sears through Clark’s chest like a brand. He looks around, blinking, but his mind is muddled, and he cannot make sense of what the ship is saying. Jor-El had told him… Jor-El had said… Clark shakes his head. The harder he tries to hold onto them, the faster the words slip away from him.

He doesn’t understand anything. His head grows cloudy, his vision dimming as the fluid that surrounds him rises once more, clinging to him. Beneath its viscous surface, Clark feels something brush against his leg, and then clamp around it firmly, wrapping around his ankle before coiling upwards, towards his thigh. Above him, he can see something moving – snake-like tendrils descending from the chamber’s arching vault, cool against his skin when they slide against it, moulding themselves around him.

“Sample secured,” the ship intones, voice cool. “Preparing for extraction.”

 

 

*

 

Bruce has seen a lot of things in his life. But as he walks along the darkened corridor of the Kryptonian scout vessel, he has to remind himself of the thought he’d had when he first found Clark in his apartment that day: _things can always get weirder._

The ship is pulsating around him, and Bruce has the unsettling, uncanny impression that he is standing in the throat of some beast – and he is walking willingly down it, deep into its monstrous gullet. Bruce swallows. “Clark?”

There’s no answer, not that he was particularly expecting one. Bruce feels like he’s calling into the void – his voice is immediately swallowed up by the ship. He feels like it should echo through it, but it’s almost as if the walls absorb the sound, trapping it within them.

He edges along the corridor, pausing when he hears a voice – a _woman’s_ voice – from further inside the ship. Bruce pauses, but the sound fades before he can determine which direction it’s coming from.

“Clark?” he calls again, but the only sound is a kind of electronic chatter that grates against his eardrums. Gritting his teeth, Bruce takes out one of his arsenal of small, bat-shaped throwing stars from his belt as he inches around a bend in the corridor. He glances around as he realises it opens onto nothing – where he’d expected there to be another length of corridor, there is only a massive, cavernous hole, half-lit with low, yellow light. Bruce hesitates only a second before he walks to the end of the gantry, still twisted and broken, and finds himself looking down into yawning nothingness. He can hear the soft sound of water lapping against the walls of the ship, and, curious, he leans over, trying to see into the bottom of the chamber.

Bruce sucks in a quick, shocked breath. _Shit. **Shit.**_

Bruce’s thoughts go skittering from his head as he looks down, and realises what he’s seeing.

There’s a writhing mass at the bottom of the vast, dark hole in the middle of the vessel – the place that Bruce is now, belatedly, realising is the Genesis Chamber. But it’s not the slithering, roiling form of the dark tendrils that has caught his eye – it’s the single human arm that hangs from one side, drooping out from between a gap in their interlocking arms.

As Bruce watches, daring himself to be mistaken, the black arms move, and the pale oval of Clark’s face appears, his head tipped back on his neck, the long, white column of his throat exposed.

“ _Clark._ ” Bruce hardly expects an answer, and naturally, he doesn't get one. It only takes him a moment to get the grapnel gun out of his belt and fire it, and then he’s descending into the chamber, swinging in a low arc until he splashes down into the fluid below. There’s a sharp _snap_ and Bruce looks up to see one of the ship’s arms slicing through the grapnel cord as if it’s no more than string. Bruce is on the move immediately, raising his hand, the sharp edge of his throwing star facing outwards – for all the good he realises it will do him. Breathing heavily, Bruce looks around, but the ship’s arms aren’t closing on him – not yet, at any rate. The same electronic chatter as before is rising in his ears – as if it’s coming from _within himself_ , rather than from the ship – before resolving itself into a female voice.

“Acknowledging presence of foreign genetic material. Introduction of foreign material will lead to contamination of the chamber. Do you possess the necessary authority to override security protocols?”

Bruce ignores it. Of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t have the authority to override those security protocols, or any other authority either. The only thing he does have is the curved throwing star in his hand, and the grapnel gun at his belt. He wades deeper in the fluid, feeling it pull at him, as if it wants to hold him in place.

“No input detected,” the ship says again, its tone still impassive, but somehow, this time, a shade more threatening. “I ask again: do you possess the necessary authority to override security protocols?”

“Shut the hell up,” Bruce mutters through his gritted teeth as he pushes his way forward with increasing difficulty. The liquid seems to be thickening around him as he goes, becoming more viscous, clinging to him and slowing him down.

Bruce doesn’t stop. His muscles begin to burn – it’s like wading through quicksand. Something brushes past his leg. But he doesn’t take his eyes from Clark – from where Clark’s body is slowly becoming encased in the ship’s slithering limbs. As he watches, one small arm slides over Clark’s face and slips between his parted lips and slithers down his throat. Clark’s chest heaves, convulsing slightly as if he’s choking, but his limbs remain slack at his sides, and he makes no other move to try to dislodge it.

Bruce raises his arm, the throwing star leaving his fingers with a flick of his wrist. It carves its way through the air, embedding itself in the arm. Bruce expects it to spark and go slack, like any other electronic device being hit with a sharp object, but instead, it recoils, _like it’s alive_ , shimmering in the air as if it’s melting and then reforming itself.

 _At least it’s out of Clark’s mouth_ , Bruce has time to think as it rears back and sprouts hideous teeth, before it snakes through the air towards him. Bruce snaps his head to the side as it flashes by him, hurling another throwing star at the coil of limbs that holds Clark. Again, it has no effect that Bruce can detect, as he finds a handhold on the wall of the chamber and pulls himself up. The fluid seems to be doing its best to suck him back down, but he breaks free, shimmying up the wall, using its own strangely organic structure against itself. On the far wall he can see a bank of lights, and something that definitely looks like cables – _real_ cables, not snake-like arms that seem to live and respond to pain and think for themselves.

Bruce scrambles forward, his fingers slippery and wet, and almost loses his grip as one of the black tendrils winds itself around his leg, yanking him down. Bruce grits his teeth and holds on, before slicing down with the edge of his throwing star. The arm isn’t hurt – instead, it seems to break apart of its own volition rather than take the blow – but it’s enough for Bruce to get away, finding a groove in the wall that’s big enough for him to pull himself up and onto.

The ship seems to be throbbing around him, the deep shadows pulsing, as if the walls are expanding and contracting, like a heart. Bruce crawls forward, but he doesn’t get far before the limbs have found him again and are swarming forward, some of them bouncing off the wall above his head; but enough of them burrow into the small groove to wrap themselves around his bicep, pulling at him, while others slice whip-like against his face. Bruce feels blood drip down his chin, and he stabs his remaining throwing star into the ship wall, using it to anchor himself – but it does him no good. The limbs are too strong and too numerous, and soon he feels them winding around his calves, his thigh, his waist, dragging him out over the chamber.

Bruce grunts, gritting his teeth as one thick limb coils itself around his chest, squeezing. The pressure is unbearable – Bruce can feel his chest compressing, his ribs shifting beneath his skin as it slowly constricts around him, crushing the air from his lungs. It’s pain beyond belief – not just from the slow constriction of his chest, but the burn of _not being able to breathe_ , the closing of his throat as his body begins to panic. From the corner of his eye Bruce can see the faint blink of the computer banks, the sightless eyes that control the limbs, the ship, and whatever it’s doing to Clark.

 _Clark._ Bruce closes his eyes, gasping, his lips pulled back into a snarl of pain. And perhaps that’s worse than the pain: the knowledge that he has, once again, failed.

 

*

 

It’s a strange feeling – Clark becomes aware of it by stages. When he first opens his eyes, blinking slowly, he’s unsure of where he is or what is happening. He can feel the gentle constriction of the ship around him, the slow drawing out of himself _from_ himself. There’s a strange detachment about everything, as if he’s only watching it happen from somewhere far distant.

It’s only with a jolt that he realises that this is, in fact, _exactly_ what is happening: as he moves his eyes, he realises he’s not seeing through his own eyes, or hearing with his own ears. He is looking down at himself, his senses free of his body, watching with something that could almost be called dispassion.

 _It’s the ship._ The thought floats to him almost lazily, drifting slowly to the forefront of his mind. He isn’t himself anymore – whatever the ship is doing, he can see through _its_ eyes now; watch what is happening from its vantage point above them. It’s strange, to feel the tightness of the chrysalis the ship is forming against his skin, but at the same time be so utterly detached from it.

Something spikes in his consciousness – something that, if he had still been wholly in his body, he would have called pain. But it’s not that; it’s more a burst of sudden heat, as the ship’s defence systems flare to life, warning of some danger to the Genesis Chamber.

Clark tries to look – he feels muscles straining in his neck even as knows he doesn’t need to move in order to see what’s happening – but all he sees is a shadow passing across the cavern, the prickle of alarms going off, and then…

_Bruce._

The parts of Clark that can still think, still _remember_ , jolt suddenly to life, struggling against the parts of the ship that are lulling him to sleep, slowly pulling him gently to pieces. He watches, somehow, from two angles at once as a struggling black figure is pulled from the wall, the ship’s defensive arms swooping through the air and curling around him, trapping him in their embrace. Clark struggles a moment, trying to remember who this is and why he should _care_ , fighting against the ship’s insistence that this is a threat that must be eliminated.

_Foreign material detected. Material must be removed to prevent contamination._

The ship’s security protocols are calm, a voice that sounds infinitely reasonable and judicious. For a moment, Clark is tempted to listen to it – it is only natural, of course, that a threat needs to be removed before it can do harm. The ship is only doing what it has been programmed to do: to reproduce the Kryptonian race, and ensure that the Genesis Chamber continues to create new life. Threats to that mission _have_ to be eliminated.

But even as he feels acceptance of the vessel’s protocols wash over him, there is still some small particle of Clark that knows this is wrong – this is _not_ a threat. Or at least, if it is, then what it threatens is something that should not be happening. The paradox sends a small buzz of confusion through his head, but he forces himself to hold onto it, and to hold onto the small part of his mind that keeps repeating a word – no, a name. _Bruce. Bruce._

Clark struggles suddenly against his bonds, trying desperately to move his arms. The part of him that still recalls, that still remains inside his body is fighting back, trying to scrape his consciousness back from distant places the ship has sent it. It feels futile, the ship clamping down, and refusing to set him free.

_You are the Codex._

The ship’s voice is in his head, calm and soft and rational. It would be so easy to just listen to it, to allow himself to sink down into the small, warm world it has created for him, to drift to sleep and forget.

But he can’t. He cannot allow this to happen. The struggling figure – _Bruce_ – will be torn to pieces if he doesn’t stop this, if he doesn’t do _something_.

_The threat will be eliminated._

_No. No. Bruce._

Clark almost can’t tell which are his thoughts and which are the ship’s, but he can feel himself struggling once again, arms tearing through the throbbing mass of tentacles the ship has enclosed him in. They break apart, almost fibrous in his hands, just as the shriek of an alarm bell goes off in his head.

 _Alert._ _Extraction process interrupted. Attempted removal of the Codex._

Clark gasps, heaving in a breath as he breaks through the chrysalis. For a moment, his head screams with pain, as if someone has taken an ice pick to his brain, but he struggles his way out, his muscles on fire, every cell in his body shrieking at him to stay where he is, to accept his place here and fulfil his purpose.

 _This is not my purpose_ , he tells it. _This purpose… this purpose is obsolete. If this is what it means, then it means nothing._

The ship convulses at that, and Clark feels it draw tight around him, trying to pull him back down. He understands what he’s saying: the ship was designed and built by the same line of people that had eventually lead to the council that doomed Krypton; to the cruelties of Zod, in the name of preserving the Kryptonian race. If this is what it takes, then the price is too high.

Somewhere above him, he hears his name being called: Bruce’s voice sounds tight and strangled, but he catches the words, if only barely: “ _Close your eyes._ ”

He manages to comply, if only just, before he sees something drop from Bruce’s hand, a second before everything whites out. Clark realises a moment before the _boom_ that he’s dropped some kind of flash grenade, something that sends the fluid in the chamber swirling in the wake of the concussive blast. Clark realises that in a human, the light and the sound would have wiped out both his sight and hearing – but he can still hear the sound of Bruce’s grapnel gun going off, and the sound of something shattering above his head.

The ship is still trying desperately to hold onto him, shrieking in a way that sounds disturbingly like genuine distress as he tears, feebly, at the arms that hold him. He still hasn’t quite managed to extract his mind from the vessel’s systems, from the parts of it that still insist he stay where he is, that he is the Codex and he is _required_ , but he has enough mind of his own to keep struggling away, to simply keep _trying…_

Clark jerks, writhing away when he feels a heavy arm across his back. For a moment, he thinks it’s the ship wrapping around him again, but then he feels warm fingers pressing into his side, the heat of Bruce’s breath against his cheek as he hauls him out of the cocoon the ship has built around him.

“Clark? _Clark?_ ”

He hears his name, Bruce’s voice still recognisable through the filter of the suit. He opens his mouth to answer, but instead regurgitates several mouthfuls of amniotic fluid, coughing it up until he feels his lungs burning.

“We need to get out of here. _Now._ ”

Clark knows he’s right, but his legs fold beneath him when he tries to walk, his head sagging. He tries to mutter something, to tell Bruce that he should get out, but apparently whatever he says isn’t what Bruce wants to hear, because he snaps, “Shut up, Clark,” before yanking him bodily against him, lifting him off the floor. “Hold on. This might… well, hold on.”

Clark hears Bruce fumble in his belt a moment, and then, with a delicacy of hearing he can’t quite account for, he hears the pin being pulled from a grenade.

This one must have been a standard concussion grenade, because Clark feels the burning heat of the explosion across his skin, hears the tearing sound of rending metal. Bruce’s grip on his side doesn’t falter as he moves forward, pulling Clark with him, bringing him out of the smoking hulk of the scout ship.

The cold outside hits him like a blow as they emerge. Ordinarily it wouldn’t bother him, but now, he feels weak and disoriented, his thoughts scattered, and his awareness vague. He can fear Bruce’s feet crunch in the snow, and becomes aware that Bruce is actually _carrying_ him, one hand on his back, the other behind his knees, his head lolling uselessly against his chest.

The cold air in his lungs feels like life and he breathes it in gratefully, even though he doesn’t technically _need_ to, until Bruce sets him down, his back against a tree, and crouches down in front of him.

“Clark.”

Clark blinks, his eyes adjusting to the whiteness of the snow after the dark, warm concealment of the ship. And… Bruce’s face, covered by the cowl is just in front of him, mouth set in a grim line, the whites of his eyes stark against the black of the mask.

“I – ” he starts to say, but his throat feels too raw to speak. There’s no words he can say, in any case – there’s nothing he can say that conveys what he wants to tell him. Instead, Clark leans forward, his lips sliding against Bruce’s mouth, weak and trembling, and desperate to show him that… that…

“It’s okay,” Bruce says, and then he scrapes the cowl back off his head, hands winding around Clark’s jaw to pull him close, tongue sliding between his lips. When he pulls back, his eyes are boring into Clark’s, as hard as stones. “I thought…”

Clark shakes his head. “So did I.”

He shifts his gaze a little, looking past Bruce. He gasps lightly when he catches sight of the scout ship, a gaping hole in its side, sparking with destroyed electronics. It has disgorged the amniotic fluid out into the snow, where it pools, cooling, sinking into the earth.

Bruce turns his head to follow Clark’s gaze, frowning a little.

“I think I… destroyed the ship,” Bruce says, his breath making white clouds in the air between them.

“I destroyed it the first time,” Clark says, licking his lips. Then he shrugs, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “So one all, I guess.”

Bruce hesitates, as if unsure whether Clark is really making a joke, but then a small grunt of laughter escapes him. “How do you feel?”

“Horrible,” Clark tells him. “Just… horrible.”

Bruce studies him a moment. “You look it.”

“Well, thank you.”

Bruce is quiet, before he raises his hand and slides it over Clark’s cheek. “We should talk.”

Clark lets his eyes flicker shut, leaning his head back against the hard trunk of the tree. “Does it have to be now?”

For a moment, he thinks Bruce is going to say _Yes, it has to be now,_ but then he hears a soft laugh, and Bruce’s thumb traces over the arch of his cheekbone. “No. It doesn’t have to be now.”

“Thank God,” is all Clark has the energy to say, as the sound of the Batplane drifts slowly to his ears.

Clark knows he’s right, and that this will be something they need to discuss, need to sort through and find a way forward from here. But for now, all he wants to do is feel Bruce’s lips against his, the cold on his skin, and know that he is alive.

 


End file.
